I spent the last two days waiting for a delivery: I treated myself to a lovely new Netbook, even paid extra to have it delivered on a specified day. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Several phone calls to various "customer service"* numbers later... the Netbook MIGHT be delivered tomorrow, provided the auguries are good, the van driver actually remembers to put it in his van and stuff like that.

The annoying thing is that I kind of expected this. The computing company concerned are notorious, but the durn thing was such a good deal I couldn't help myself. Should have stuck to Dell, who at least deliver on time, with mimimum fuss.

But worse than the customer service from the computer company was the rancid old bag on the end of the line at the courier depot. Her rudeness was almost refreshing, in the era of keeping the customer happy, if ill-served, where people murmur platitudes at you from the fastness of their call centres and hope you'll go away, quickly. I don't often ring head offices and track down customer relations managers to complain, but I did today. That'll teach you to hack off a girl like me, missus.

-----------------
* Why do they call them that when in fact, they are there to placate the customer by telling them lies, rather than serve the customer by actually providing a service?

Rain

It has been raining, almost solidly, for almost a month now. I don't mind a bit of rain, now and again. Sure, we'd all be living in a desert if it didn't tip down now and again. The reason this country is so fecking green is because of all that precipitation. It's a wonder we don't all have moss growing up us, to be honest.

But this constant, incessant, stultifying rain is wearing me down. You can't do anything, not even laundry. And it's cold, too. It's not the soft mizzling rain of a warm irish summer. It's more like the chilly, sinew-tightening rain of late october. It's not much fun being a pagan in summer anymore: try to dance round a handy phallic standing stone at midnight and you'd get your death. Not that I have ever danced round anything at midnight. Well, not unless you count the back garden during an infamous party a few years back. But that was down to the drink and the company, rather than any spiritual urges.

The thing is, I don't remember the summers of my youth being so wet. There was that dreadful June to August when I was seventeen, when it did rain almost every day, but that stands out in my memory because it was so unusual. This place is hardly the CoteD'Azur, but we used to have summers that passed for summer, with long, balmy days and warm evenings, where you could sit outside with a nice glass of wine and watch the stars.

Nowadays it's all rain. And I can't see the stars when it rains.