This morning I got a ‘final demand’ bill from France Telecom Orange which – in the chaos that is my turbulent life at the minute – has been overlooked. Do something now, the letter threatened, or we’re going to couper your ligne, chummy. The only problem was – even though it says ‘étranger’ quite clearly on my details – no way is provided of doing this from England. None of the  UK Orange sites could help me. On the last line of the last page of the French site in minute letters it says ‘Contact us by email’. But to do this you have to join their little club. And after that, it takes a few days – days? – to get one set up in the system. So they’ll  cut me off anyway, and of course it will be my fault.

Three years ago a man now holding a very senior Cabinet post promised, if elected, to look very closely at my request for to make it illegal for any internet service not to provide personally answered phone lines and email contact. I can tell he’s doing a thorough job of the looking into thing, because two and a half years after getting elected, he hasn’t come up with anything, as such.

This morning, Tesco Bank wrote to me and said I could transfer all my money from elsewhere to their bank, and they would do the whole operation entirely free of charge. How kind of them.

Three weeks into the Sony Xperia Android experience, it will take calls and make them. I am synchronised to Google and my gmail account. It won’t transfer the contacts from my old phone (we’ve had our best brains on this one, and nobody can do it) and the woefully insufficient ‘getting started’ leaflet included in the start-up pack would struggle to start a fight. The full online version (tough if you don’t do online) is, I’d say, at Stage 2 in a long term experiment involving backward monkeys who share one typewriter. They still have a long way to go. The retail outlet where I bought it never anwers the phone (look at the Xperia reviews and you’ll soon unerstand why) and the Sony website has no email, phone etc etc etc. What started out promising to be an android is become a haemorrhoid.

Does this make me a grumpy old man, or just someone who is wise to these jokers?

Decide for yourselves…..this is the first in a new series, to get its own BONKINROME page.