Noooooooooo, Why me, Please Work, So Unfair, I want it back, Thanks Santa

When I initially spoke to BT, they said it would be around the early part of January before my phone would be back working again. I begged them to fix it sooner, but they said they would have to put in a complete new line and the fact one of my neighbours wasn't playing ball didn't help matters.

Anyway, these are the stages of my mental decline and gradual acceptance of my terrible loss of not having a telephone.

( After 6 pm each day )

Day 1 - There was a strange crackle on the line, but I was happy playing a few STT and watching Prison Break on that fantastic site posted a week or so ago that I wasn't overly concerned at the time. Then it happened, the worst event I could imagine while leading two STT's and watching episode 12 of Prison Break. Gone......Noooooooooo

Day 2 - This was spent mainly clicking on my firefox icon in various different ways to try and get a response of some kind, all I got was a SERVER NOT FOUND IN RANGE message. I clicked quickly, softly, aggressively, I spoke to my laptop in a kind way praising it for all its positive characteristics, I made fun of it and told it that a SONY would never let me down like this. None of this worked, it was not responding.

Day 3 was a Saturday. I was starting to come to terms with my loss and decided to head into the 2nd hand shops to find a Bible. I have never really been into religion and had no idea what prayer to say, so I asked the guy in the Charity shop which one would be best to repair a broken internet connection. His suggestion didn't work sadly. I was still having no luck with BT and felt they were spinning me some crappy excuses everytime I spoke to someone.

Day 4 was a bit better. I was slowly re-learning the method of speaking to real people rather than typing onto a keyboard like I do on blonde, when sending emails and while playing online. I thought it would be best to start in a simple way until I got the hang of it again .." Hello I am Lewis, how are you ". I only received strange looks from people in the street unofrtunately.

Day 5. This was a hard day. I seemed to go backwards again and returned to clicking the firefox icon, pokerstars icon and any other that would log me on. Sadly nothing worked.

Day 6. I had a real breakthrough on day 6. I started to finally except that I would be offline until the early stages of January.

Day 7 - 10 was spent reading Phil Gordon's excellent Little Blue Book and doing various other normal daily tasks such as taking my dogs out, cooking dinner and meeting with friends I hadn't really seen a lot of lately.

Day 11. Santa came to town. He was dressed in a BT uniform and he banged on my door early one morning. I was so pleased to see him that I invited him in for a cup of tea and offered him a doughnut even before he told me he was there to fix the phone line that day.

I am back to normal now and I can confirm that Santa dresses in a BT uniform.