One thing leads to another – again

Back at Great Haywood after a visit to the IWA festival on Friday, I found the inconsistent TV signal at the marina wouldn't bring in Channel 5 + 1 for the highlights of the second day of the Test match. This was really annoying, given the events of the day. I got on the internet and waited for the programme to be posted on Demand5. And waited… After 10 p.m. it seemed to promise something, and then gave just a blank window. So on Saturday morning I tried again, putting the dongle directly into the computer to cut out a stage of transmission. Success! – all those wickets falling were a great start to the day, though they've found a way to stop Firefox cutting out the adverts.

With a smug sense of fulfilment I detached the dongle, re-attached it to the lead that connects it to the Zoom WiFi box, and hung it in the window. Then I realised the hopper was open and I'd put it through the window. I pulled the lead back through, heard a splash, resisted all the decidedly non-Christian expletives that appeared unasked in my head, and spent the next 15 minutes trying to lift it from the marina floor with my recovery magnet. To no avail.

Oops. If only… (…I didn't like cricket, …GH had a better TV signal, …Erin Mae had a better aerial, …the highlights had been easier to get at on the internet, …I hadn't been so clumsy)! So on our shopping trip to Stafford I called at the Three shop, where a very nice young man sold me a replacement dongle for the only price he could, and linked it and the new SIM card to my account. I could have got it considerably cheaper from Amazon, but for that I needed the internet… And not to be in a hurry.

Unfortunately the young man didn't know that this new, updated dongle wasn't going to work with the software the old one had installed. The dongle knew, but wasn't telling. My past experience of ringing Three support has not been very good, so it was back into Stafford. Various conversations eventually identified the issue, and we got it working with the MacBook. Back on Erin Mae, it still wouldn't work with the Zoom WiFi box. Two hours of diagnosis and fiddly work later, I eventually got it going. I'm not quite sure how anyone would have managed who wasn't used to working with computers and networks.

Intriguing to observe the effects of a shortage of information – is it an addiction? Not only no cricket, but no emails, no news or weather forecast on demand, no browsing interesting topics, no blog-reading – and no posting to my own. We felt very isolated – much more so than when simply moored down the cut somewhere, well away from anyone else. Must keep an eye on this one.