Customer disservice

When I received a letter from Telstra saying that I hadn’t paid my bill and if payment wasn’t made by two days earlier (!), I risked having my phone and internet service suspended, I was close to being ropable. First off, they hadn’t sent me a bill for July, and secondly I’d  already taken the precautionary step of paying enough to cover the likely charges. I phoned and was given the usual … Read more

Recalcitrant Kindle

I have a Kindle Paperwhite ereader that’s over three years old. It’s worked well, which is just as well as I use it every day. Occasionally, though, it freezes and I have no choice but to reboot the device and then everything is back to normal. Today, that didn’t work. Repeated attempts at pressing the on/off button were in vain. I was weighing up whether to buy a new one when I … Read more

Falling out of bed

I fell out of bed last night, first time ever. It wasn’t my regular bed. One of our grand-daughters had taken up that space, and I was relegated to a spare room. The mattress is long past its use-by date, and there’s diminished support at the edges. I rolled over in my sleep and got a rude awakening when I landed on the floor, hurting my right hip. That was our previous … Read more

Spam, spam, spam

Recently I’ve experienced an upsurge of spam email in my inbox. Out of curiosity, yesterday I decided not to delete any but to allow them to fill up my Junk Email folder. By the end of the day I had received 41 items, the most I could remember. The main culprits were spammers promising to provide drinks that would reduce my waistline or drop my dress size (oi, watch it!), pills to … Read more

A slave to technology

I bought a FitBit a few months ago to help me stay fit. I set a target of 6000 steps a day, a modest total if you’re in the prime of life, less so when you’re my age. I manage to achieve this most days, but I can’t deny its effect on my daily activities. The FitBit counts steps by the swinging of the arm bearing the watch, so I avoid riding … Read more