Or phones come to that. Yup, the perils of living in the sticks has reared its ugly head again – right now my telephone line sounds like Godzilla’s eating cornflakes on the other end. I can’t call out and can’t understand anyone calling in. Which makes getting onto the old internet thoroughly impossible. ‘Aha,’ say the quick-witted among you, ‘in that case, how come I’m reading your blog? Eh? Eh? Come on beardy boy, what’ve you got to say to that?’ Well, that’s because I’m back at work again and while #Insert Name Of Global IT Company Here# disallow many, many things, blogging doesn’t seem to be one of them (though I’m sure that’ll change as soon as anyone notices it). In the meantime, those fierce stalwarts of technological industry at British Telecom have proudly told me that my crackly, crappy phone line may – or may not – be fixed by Wednesday night. By which time I’ll have been without any form of meaningful contact with the outside world for 108 hours. Hurrah. Technology? Piece of wet bloody string would be more reliable.
So I still have no idea why the purported article never appeared in the latest Scotland On Sunday. Maybe there’s some big, effusive apology and a free pair of socks, sitting in my hotmail inbox as we speak? Or perhaps there never was an article? Perhaps it was all some big, evil scam devised to increase the SoS’s circulation? You know the drill – they interview people so they’ll buy the paper, only the interview never appears!?! Infamy! Or it’s something altogether more sensible, like they ran out of semicolons, or had much better stuff to print. Ho hum.
Anyway, he said, this marks the first day of my last spell at INoGITCH. Twelve days of fun and frolics before I give it all up to become a full-time write-ist of no fixed abode. And during that time I’ve got a gala dinner to attend (really looking forward to that one) and a whole pile of books to sign (that one: not so much). But it doesn’t change the fact that these are my last 12 working days that belong to someone else. If I can work up the enthusiasm to get demob happy, I will, but not till much later.