The reason for my latest silence is not due to a reversion to previous bad habits.

Late last week we lost our landline phone, and thus our broadband, connections.

"Our line is down" is surely 'old speak' for the loss of one's telephone connection so it is something of a paradox, is it not, that the most modern means of communication still depends (or at least ours does) on the very same wire, or line, that first enabled Mr. Bell to connect people over distances?

Anyway, I reported the matter to our provider and was promised that I would be informed of the reason for, and likely duration of, the problem.
Needless to say I heard nothing from them.

So, later that day I checked with my neighbour, Brede, to see if she was similarly afflicted.
She was, so it wasn't a problem peculiar to us.

By now it was the weekend so I knew that there would be no resolution before Monday.

And when I went shopping next day, I met another neighbour.
She enquired as to whether we had a problem with our phone.
We did, I said.
It won't be fixed any time soon, she predicted.
Why not, I enquired.
Because, she told me, 'the line is down'.
And she went on to tell me that it was down in the most literal sense: someone had cut-down and stolen the actual, physical 'line' - from outside her house to a pole more than a mile away!

I called the provider on Monday to get an update.
An automated voice told me that the problem had been resolved!
I spent upwards of half an hour waiting to speak to an agent.
The agent told me that an engineer had called to my house on the Saturday but had failed gain admittance.
I enquired as to why an engineer wanted to get into my house when the problem was outside of my house.
The agent told me that the engineer was now scheduled to call to my house again on Tuesday morning.
I suggested that the engineer should, instead, go and help fix the problem where it lay.
The agent got angry and so did I so we terminated our conversation.

I got into my van and drove to where I had been told 'the line was down' and there I found a crew reinstating the said line and they were able to tell me that I should be back 'on line' - in all senses - on Tuesday.

In the event it wasn't restored until mid-day yesterday, Thursday, just short of a week since it 'went down'.

I suspect the added delay was 'engineered' by 'the agent' as a punishment!.............. and I hope the value of copper falls!