Do forgive me, dear reader, for I have been away. Now by this I most certainly don’t mean that the men in the white coats have finally caught me. What I do mean is that the miracle that is modern technology (or “modren” as the kids up here pronounce it) has temporarily wafted off into its own personal ether and left me bereft. We made the mistake of deciding to change from one provider who shall remain nameless… (oh what the hell -from Virginmedia)… to Sky. The Sky people duly came and fitted our satellite dish and we have been enjoying hopping through an even bigger array of channels – each with a niche market of probably only about 3 viewers – in the hope that somewhere there might be one that we might actually want to watch. But the real crunch came with the switch in broadband internet provision. This involved two men from BT clattering about in our roof space looking for a cable (something that happened, I might add, because I’m only a girl-type person and the wire I was pointing at – the one coming out of the wall and going into the back of the computer – just simply couldn’t have been the one that connected the internet outside world to our desktop system.) Three hours and several new swear words later we got this sorted and, as an additional benefit, they found the patio chair cushions I thought I’d lost. Given the amount of time they took, I think I might be right in surmising that the hunts for Lord Lucan and Shergar may now be called off, but at least they put every last bit of our out-of-sight-out-of-mind clutter back in its rightful place. But, and here’s the really annoying part, apparently we’re weird because we wanted to prioritise the internet rather than the telly. But oh no – we have to wait 10 days to get connected to the Sky system. Customer rights? My arse! So in order to stay connected, I have bought a dongle – a Vodafone mobile broadband device to be specific. But, the powers that be at Voodoofone have been mighty sly – there is an automatic Content Control on the device. Now I don’t believe Voodoofone has suddenly decided it has a role as a custodian of the nation’s morals. Call me cynical but it does rather seem to me that they realise that people get these things to connect while on holiday etc to things like Facebook and other social networking sites. Which are blocked by the Content Controller. Which costs a quid to get lifted. Hmmm. Anyway, I am now speaking to you from a Content Control- free dongle – which presumably means I am having unprotected text here. Catch ya later for more updates.