50 Shades of Grey BT...or how I get my kicks without a broadband connection

So it's come to this...after yet another week without the Internet and fruitless calls to BT I am going to dangle with a dongle.
And yet again I have to remind you that not everything is about 50 Shades of Grey! Though I will admit sometimes it might be more exciting if it were...
Could you imagine if BT Broadband calls were along those lines?!She ponders as she bites her lip...
Best not to think about that, we'd never be able to get through and it's bad enough now.
So trying hard not to get hot heated on the telephone to BT as I am told that whatever happens they can only provide me with a 256 service (that's a quarter of a meg), I try one last desperate time to get the answer I want to hear...
"So what you're telling me is that if I want a halfway decent service I will have to move?"
"No, just that due to your location thats the best we can do..."
I bite my lip but because he cannot see me it doesnt work and however long I keep him holding on I know he won't change his mind.
"It's never going to work," I say with tears in my eyes.
"Not really, I could say it might but my hands are tied..."
"What if I bought my own cable?"
"We're very strict about that sort of thing."
Aha I think I am getting to him.
"But it could be done? A kind of compromise.."
Foolish girl, I know I had him but compromise just isn't in their dictionary. They only deal in exclusive relationships. I've blown it.
"No," he says emphatically. "We can only do what I have said."
I have nothing to lose now.
"So what if I went with someone else?"
"That's up to you of course but no one will be able to give you a better service whatever they say..."
It's true if I want to use cables and wires there's no one else who can do it better. No one else who's got it in all the right places, who can go further and deeper. No one else with better connections.
It's galling to think how dependant I am. I shake back my hair and bite my lip again. Determined to get away once and for all secretly knowing that in the end I will be back despite myself.
But for now I will say goodbye and with dignity.
"You a forcing me," I say with a catch in my voice. I don't like to be forced to do anything. "you give me no option I am going to go mobile."
There'd is genuine regret in his voice. "I am sorry we can't help you but you have to understand our position we really are tied."
I put the phone down.
That's it the end I think sorrowfully.
I pick up the phone again and dial...
"Hi this is 3G can I interest you in a dongle....?"
I bite my lip, this could be the answer to all my prayers...

It's just not cricket...

The Boy - Bowling

There’s something so very British about the sound of leather on willow – and no it’s got nothing to do with 50 Shades of Grey – it’s cricket on a sunny (yes it was sunny in our part of Suffolk yesterday) Saturday afternoon.

The grass had been freshly mowed and the scent was a perfect backdrop to the scene before my eyes; eight teams of perfectly turned out young cricketers, laughing, running about, clapping and gently cheering on their fellow team mates.

There were lots of: “Good Bowl!” “Marvellous catch!” “Super fielding!” “Excellent back up!”

It was so very civilised or at least that’s what I thought…

There were a few stalwart parents from our club at the Tourney for Under 9 Cricketers, gamely clapping and supporting our little team of 6 throughout the interminable matches that had been going on since 10 in the morning. It wasn’t too onerous, our boys had won every match played and we were through to the semi-finals.

Absolutely brilliant, especially as two players in the team had never played in a cricket tourney before and in fact had only just made it in to the team for the first time. The Boy being one.

The kids were keyed up; it looked very likely that they had a chance of winning. The anticipation around the ground grew as the semi-finals were played out. It was an unbelievable match, both teams neck and neck, not a ball could be given not a run let slip by. They got through.

It was great.

The finals.

We could win. And even if we didn’t it looked like a great game would ensue. I was really looking forward to it.That is until I saw the team we were up against.

And their supporters…

If I said we were outgunned, outnumbered and outclassed that would have been an understatement…

To our five supporters there were 40 of theirs en famille with picnics, chairs rugs and banners – yup banners.

It seemed out of place; it seemed so contrived. It was scary enough to us but what it would do to our little team, I dreaded.

Suddenly there was an air of danger. It was uncomfortable.

As for their team – I counted nine children. And some of them looked suspiciously big.

The match started but I could see that our coach was very unhappy and then the whispers began – some of the children playing on the other team were in Year 5 (10 year olds up against  kids under 9). Some of the children on the other team had not been playing every match but had been resting every other one so were of course much fresher than our little band who had played six matches on the go to get to the finals.

As supporters we muttered about how unfair that was and gradually became more and more silent with suppressed anger. The team faltered without our support and started to lose heart. Fielding became fumbled, batting mistakes were made.

To loud cheers from the other side it looked like we would sink without a trace.

But coaches the world over now in the face of utter annihilation the best thing to do is to fight on and pretend everything is OK and he made us clap and call out good fields and unlucky when the boys didn’t quite and the little team rallied and started to fight back. Every ball was chased down, the boys started working harder as a team than ever before they clicked properly and it was great to see.

But they still lost.

The matter was brought up with the organisers who at least apologised to our coach though not I noted to the boys themselves. It was out of his hands and too late to do anything about it anyway. The other team claimed they hadn’t realised they had done anything wrong though as I trotted past I overheard one of the mothers saying that all their best players were Under 10s and as there wasn’t an Under 10 tourney how else were her kids going to get to play if they didn’t play Under 9?

It was galling to see their team go up and get the trophy and have their photographs taken but as I said to The Boy: “Better to lose honourably than to win by cheating."

I don’t think it cut much ice and it left a rather sour note at the end of a lovely day. But I think as a team the boys will stick together bonded by their loss and the fact that they should have won if everyone had been playing by the rules.

"Cheating," said The Boy in the car on the way back home: "just isn’t cricket, Mummy."

Humility and humiliation...I just love boys!

So we've opted for 50 Shades of Grey in Book Club and I thought I was going to have to order it via the Library and risk being spotted up to no good by the eternal busybodies that make up country life when a friend up and volunteered her copy.
"For God's sake take it, " she said. "I've got to get it out of the house before my husband sees what it really is all about. He says he's never seen me so engrossed and I just couldn't cope if he knew. It was bad enough when he caught me reading Twilight!"
I know that feeling. There are some things you just don't want your other half knowing about you. Sod stretch marks and VPL and the fact that you only shave to your knees if they knew what you read...well that's getting just too personal. I don't care that I have been married to him for nigh on 13 years I don't like any censure when I read. I don't like people....
Knowing.
When I lived in London I couldn't read on the Tube not because most of the time I found myself squashed up against a stranger's nether regions or else stuffed under their arm pit, it was because I didn't want them to know too much about me or to judge me in any way.
So when I was offered the loan of the book I grabbed at the chance. I knew the book would be delivered to me discreetly and no one would be any the wiser.
BUT
I hadn't reckoned on my youngest or his newly found reading skills...
My lovely friend had popped the infamous book in Bog Boy's book bag for me to collect at the end of the day. I was waving to him merrily as he came out of class when I noticed him delve into the bag.
Everything went into slow motion.
I knew what he was about to do right there in the middle of the school yard where everyone could see.
"Mum," he yelled, his pure young voice ringing out securing everyone's attention as can only happen when you desperately want to hide. "What's this in my book bag?"
He took the tome out and started to wave it about for all to see.
I struggled to get to him through the hordes of children impeding my way.
"Just a book Darling for Mummy pop it back in your book bag..."
"It's called 50 Shades of Grey," he hollered, "What's it about...?"
Ah yes indeed...I cast a furtive and slightly panicky look round. It's funny how you can see immediately those in the know and can read exactly what they think from their faces.
There were a few too many knowing smirks as I hastily grabbed the book, face aflame and stuffed it into my hand bag.
Bang goes any pretence at subtlety and bang goes my previously spotless reputation...so looking forward to tomorrow morning's drop off!

 

Don't judge a book by it's cover....

Sometimes it seems that it is just Sex Sex Sex I can’t seem to get away from it.

Not even at Book Club that solid staple of the really not wanting to be middle aged Middle England housewives.

But it has wormed its way in there in the form of “50 Shadesof Grey”. Now I have not read the book but already it has that giddy teenage reputation among the ladies of the Suffolk branch of the Dead Tree Society that was once held  so dear by the likes of Shirley Conran and Judith Kranz with Lace and Princess Daisy during the early 1980s.

I blame it on Kindle.

Who knows but ourselves what we are reading and oh how demure we can look with the ubiquitous little machine held primly up to our noses.

Now no one can peer imperiously over their glasses an raise an eyebrow at our choice of reading matter for there are no covers to give away our secrets though possibly an enigmatic smile will say more powerfully what has captured our imaginations in far more detail than a mere title emblazoned on the spine of a book.

There is an elevated feeling of liberation knowing that no one knows what you are reading and that they can only guess and never judge unless you give them leave by divulging your secrets.

It makes me feel quite giddy but then I come back down to earth with a bump – I don’t actually have a Kindle and will have to hope that the cover of this well hyped book is very discreet or I’ll just have to do what I did as a teenager – and get a bigger book to hide it!