Although I am writing this at 250 words per minute, (maybe a bit less with accuracy of about 15%), it will take about 2 days for it to hit the web because my internet access has been throttled back to half the speed of a dial-up. Now I guess throttling the account is a preference to a) no internet access or; b) getting changed excess megs and getting a huge bill at months end, however……

My particular ISP, which tries to make me feel good by having singing animals in its adverts, has been having problems of late. Firstly, the internet usage graph was running 24 hours behind, so I got told my quota was up 24 hours after it was used up.

I went on-line to upgrade to the next plan, but because their pages are geared to broadband users, it takes longer than John Howard takes to say sorry before the page loads.

I upgraded and the confirmation message said it will be completed within 24 hours. That was 25 hours ago.

I just rang the ISP. The fun starts with the fact that answering the phone is a human-free activity. A charming pre-recorded voice asks what you are calling about and then a computer tries to figure out what you said. “Upgrading broadband internet” I said, “Did you say ‘I’m dating a broad called Annette?’” comes the reply.

“I’d like to talk to a human!!!” I scream down the phone. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand that, I’ll put you through to an operator” whispers the cyber-seductress.

When I finally get through to Brian, who surprisingly speaks English (albeit somewhat inarticulately), I am told that the online upgrading system isn’t working at the moment and it will be 24 hours before the manual upgrade goes through.

Whilst on the phone I was looking at the service status page of the provider. It tells me the usage meter is running a day late, but nothing about the on-line upgrade being out of action. But it does talk about “the high level of service expected by our customers”. Yes, we expect it, it just doesn’t get delivered.