It was partly my own fault.  Enraged by a quarterly bill for more than £45 of which only 0.06 pence represented call charges, I let them pull the plug.  Words like: ‘Cheek’, ‘Nerve’ and ‘Almighty arrogance’ bounced off the office walls.  With a liberal sprinkling of the customary expletives, of course.  Half an hour later, a horrible truth hit home.  That line had had my broadband on it.  I was now adrift in a technological vale of tears; a cyberspace where no-one could hear me scream.

But that was just the start.  Little did I know that five days and enough negative adrenalin to pole-axe a polar bear later, I would still be out of contact with the surreal world.  Terrible in its wrath, BT had resolutely cast me into outer darkness, there to remain for another seven to ten working days.

Picture, if you will, the hapless home worker, suddenly left high and dry.  No email, no Internet, no fax.  Having pleasantly asked (FX: whimpering and grovelling)  BT to reinstate my service, I was told I would have to completely re-order a telephone line.  It would take up to 48 hours to get connected.  I would probably get the same number, but that could not be guaranteed.

‘But what about my broadband?’ I flustered.
‘You’ll have to talk to your service provider about that.’
So I did.
‘It’s OK, the pulse is still going down that line.’ I was told.  ‘Everything should be fine.’

There is an ocean of difference, dear reader, between ’should’ and ‘will’.  I would not know how vast that ocean was for another four days.  Inured to the fact that Monday was now totally up the shoot, I reached for the laptop and the 3G coms card.  This, I reasoned, would at least keep the business running, albeit expensively.  There was only one problem.  Emails were coming in but the system was not letting any emails out.  Desperate to get some paying work done, I chose to ignore that ’til the morrow.

Too busy to lose another day to fixing stuff, the email problem did not become insufferable until Wednesday - the same day I was reasonably expecting a return to normality.  With what sounded like a dialling tone on the line, I imagined BT had reconnected me.  A foolish whimsy, in retrospect.  But I was always gullible.  Ominously, though, the soft yellow pulse of broadband light on router was missing.  The ADSL was still AWOL.  So it was back on to BT.  A verbal maze of interactive menus finally led me to a customer service representative.  This was where things got worse. Much worse.

‘Oh, your order was cancelled,’ came the voice.
‘What?’ I squeaked, ‘Cancelled by whom? When?  I didn’t cancel it.  In fact, I paid £50 up front to be reconnected.’
‘Sorry madam, I can’t tell you why it was cancelled, we don’t have that information,’ said the voice, ‘I’ll put you through to sales.  They have that information.’

And guess what?  Yup, the thing was a total mystery to the sales department, too.  According to them, customer services had that information.  And so the fun went on.  My order had been cancelled, no-one was saying why and I had to go through the order process all over again.  Oh, and by the way, that’d be another 48 hours before the line would be reconnected.  Cue Apoplectic Fit Number 149.  To top it all, the salesman sweetly suggested that if I were to tell customer services my sorry tale, they would surely see their way to advancing the order.

You’re ahead of me, now, aren’t you?  The customer services response?  ‘We can’t advance orders.  All orders are treated the same.’

Cue fit of Tsunamic proportions.

Never one to give in lightly, I next got on to my ISP. Just by way of varying the agony, you understand.  I’d tried every type of email setting, I told tech help, but still couldn’t get mail out from the laptop.  Three quarters of an hour later and every email setting laboriously tried yet again, it was, ‘You’ve obviously got a problem with Outlook.  I’ll give you the number for Microsoft.’  A maniacal cackle crept out before I could stop it.  I might be going mad but not so mad that I was ready to get embroiled in that one.  ‘You have to be kidding,’ I managed, the last vestige of politeness in my body packing up and leaving home for good.

So.  Friday. Ha, ha!  I was ignoring the phone by now.  Neyeah, neyeah!  I don’t care, so there!  Around three in the afternoon, my other line rang out and fell silent.  I paused, then carried on with my work.  I was playing this game pretty well.  Come 4pm, I nonchalantly gave the offending phone a try.  Miracle of miracles!  There was a dial tone and it wasn’t a spoof.  But… no light on the broadband.  More calls to BT were of no avail.  By close of business, it was clear I’d have to contact my ISP again.

Bleary, weary and still in my dressing gown, I was on the phone at the stroke of nine the next morning.  ‘Ah,’ said a sympathetic voice, ‘I see what’s happened.  BT have taken the markers off the line.  Your account’s been closed.  I’m afraid you’ll have to open another one.’

Having no energy left to even squeak, I gasped.  ‘But I paid in advance for a year and that was in September.’
‘Oh, we’ll credit you that back.’
(Thinks: Big Deal)
‘So you’re telling me that I have to take out a new contract? I take it that means new passwords and everything?’

It did.  It also meant more money.  They weren’t doing the old deal any more.  With a final twist of the knife, I was told that even though the line had been reinstated with the same number and we all knew it could handle broadband, BT would have to test it.  Not once, but twice. Just to make sure.

A bleak vastness opened before me.  A black hole into which another seven to ten working days of my life would disappear.  Still not quite beaten, I dug out a couple of modem leads.  Dusting off the faded memory of how dial-up used to work, I finally got a laptop and desktop up and running.  The original email settings worked just fine.  Which shows you how much help tech help can be.

Once more online, I first punched a triumphant fist in the air, then shook it at an uncomprehending ceiling.

‘Curse you, BT !’ I cried. ‘And you, ISP !’

Sad.  But it made me feel slightly better.