Sunday, October 11, 2009

TalkTalk trouble (again - 2)

At the eight o'clock Eucharist this morning, four young Turkish women joined us, two were wearing the hijab (forbidden in secular Turkey), two were not. Three were on a six month course in the University, the fourth is a PhD student in Theology. She was the one who sat in choir with us (wearing the hijab) and followed the prayer book carefully. She said she wanted to learn more about Anglican Christianity as part of her studies. She is investigating the Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of group of great fourth century orthodox theologians, known as the Cappadocian Fathers, from their place of origin. "I too am from Cappadocia", she said with a great smile.'

If anyone ever asks how I can justify doing the eight o'clock Eucharist on Sundays for a handful of people, especially when it's a huge effort after a late night of banqueting, I can say in all honesty, that I never know quite what else is going to happen that will amaze me and make my day different. It's a time not to be missed.

The four also sat through the Sung Eucharist as well, and looked surprised when I greeted them with the arabic Christian salutation Mar hab'a at the Peace. I couldn't, however, persuade them to stop for tea afterwards. Perhaps next time.

Still no reply from TalkTalk, so this evening, I copied my email request to their CEO Charles Dunstone, to see if that can wake the dead. No doubt this will lead to a lecture about procedure thinly veiled as an apology from some defensive minion, but it's not unreasonable to expect some acknowledgement, even if it's only an auto reply saying they've gone home for the weekend.

I needed to use my unsecured desktop computer briefly to use the scanner hooked up to it, to prepare a Christmas card image for the publishers. As a precaution, given the anti virus was not properly installed, I switched off the router while the system was active. In doing this, by no means I yet understand, I managed to wipe the router settings competely. This took me half an hour to diagnose and a lot longer to re-instate the wireless password settings on the various computers in the house. What a lot of trouble and time wasted, all emanating from TalkTalk's non response.

Lisa, the daughter of two of our oldest friends, Mike and Gail arrived to stay with us during the afternoon. She's a singer, doing an opera course with grand mentor Dennis O'Neill. It's marvellous for us to have an opportunity to get to know her as the musical daughter of musical parents, establishing herself in that most demanding of career.

By the end of the day, still no word from TalkTalk, so I went to the F-Secure site and took advantage of their 30-day free trial Internet Security offer. That will tide me over until TalkTalk wake up. Or until we revert to BT, for the certainty of service.

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