Online offline...

I knocked back the broadband maybe a month ago. Just wasn't getting any use out of it. Our lass thinks that coming home from working thirteen hour days just to plug into the wall for the rest of the night is highly unsociable anyway, so why pay big money for the privilege. And it is big money when you add it all up over the year.

I should veg out in front Coronationenders and The Old Bill or whatever that sad cockney sullen little excuse for a cop show's called.

But the bottom line eventually won out. The high bill. I wouldn't mind if I got my moneys worth with the zappy connection that they promise in the swanky adverts.

But half the time I'm getting a connection that's not much better than dial-up, so I pulled the plug on the deal.

Except that I'd forgotten about the delights of dial-up. Like when you're online no-one can phone in, and you're paying by the minute. Oh joy.

And this week has been a particular drag when it comes to sustaining a connection. Its meant that I've been more or less cut off from the net for most of the week - and explains why I've not been keeping the blogging up to the standards you've come to expect.

Not that I've missed the net at all.

Seriously.

The invasion of Iraq by our esteemed leaders - putting our forces in harms way and creating hatred and distrust of English-speakers for generations (Damn there goes my chill-out trip to the Bekka Valley then) - has lost my attention.

I've been a total news junkie for several weeks. I've been following all these fancy satellite reports from our man in Basra. I've a mate who's out there in uniform, and a mate who's wife's family are holed up in Baghdad so its all a bit too real for comfort.

And my need to be browsing around the net for the sake of it has waned a lot too. The footie sites have descended into a password-protected pop-up fest, with more about betting and merchandise than actual facts about the club. My favourite music sites are getting far too ad-riddled as well.

I've been on to the ISP playing pop about the situation. They even sent a man with a van around today to check the line. No difference of course. Still getting kicked off after twenty seconds. Still not bothering me that much. Of course its rather bothering the Ayup boys, who tell me that the site hit rate goes right up if I do a daily blogging...

It's been a grand old week, what with England pulling out a result against the Turks and Leeds FINALLY pulling out all the stops down in London. I don't need stuff like the Internet giving me any grief!

By the way - who's this Paul McCartney bloke anyway? He was playing at the Leadmill or something?

B

Just to let you know that we're considering a total re-work of the Ayup site, since the place is put together via laptops these days. Might make it more blog focussed if our mate B can get his connection sorted. More later. Northerner.