It’s been a tough week dear reader made tougher still by the complete and utter failure of my broadband service and the inability of the almighty “provider”, Virginmedia, to do anything more than come round and metaphorically kick the tyres of my modem. I swear on the saintly head of Tim Berners-Lee that if the next Virgin employee that arrives at my house sucks in his cheeks as if he has just witnessed his only child breaking their fucking leg when they spy my Mac I shall probably shove my unused mac mini up his information superhighway. And let me tell you no amount of fibre optic cable will get it out.

This situation is enough to drive a sane person over the edge but as I am somewhat less than sane at the best of times you can only imagine the state I find myself in at the moment, suffice to say that my O2 dongle is the most precious thing in my life these days. I don’t mind telling you my dear friends that I am quite glum but I don’t want to go about it, much. Rest assured I am documenting the whole ghastly episode for a future post/mini series/Lifetime movie. The working title is, “Byte Back – A Waiters Struggle.” I shall be played by Mexican actor fantastico, Gonzalo Vega whilst the evil Virginmedia employees will be played by extras from The Hills Have Eyes, the really ugly originals that is.

I am also considering writing a Dave Pelzer type book about the whole horrible affair, “Denial of Service – The Ultimate Betrayal.” The cover shall be a water colour image of a small, but perfectly formed, waiter sobbing his little precious heart out whilst clutching his switched off Macbook. It will of course be a classic and will sit proud on the shelves of bookshops around the world alongside other such classics in the genre such as, “A Child Named it”, “A Child Named Shit” and “A Child Named Adam Sandler”.

But like I say, I don’t want to go on about it.

Obviously with no broadband to keep me occupied I had to venture outside, outside where the real people are. This, as you can imagine, was most disagreeable. These days I prefer my interactions with other people to be through type and click rather than what Larry David calls, stop and chat. But what you gonna do, you have to make with the nice from time to time. I wandered off in the direction of my local newsagents/corner shop. It’s an agreeable little place where you can buy everything from shaving foam to Mars Bars and Daily Mails to Razzles (so not all good then). It really is a disgusting, misogynistic, hate filled rag – and Razzle is sickening too.

The best thing about this shop is the people who work in it. They are, like anybody who works in such a shop, fantastic sources of information. If you like your eggs with a healthy dollop of gossip and half truths then my corner shop is the place for you, or at least it was.

All seemed well as I approached the front door. The same small ad’s cluttered the window as always, most it appeared were cat related – cats for sale, lost cats, cat neutering, cat baskets, cat groomers (true story), but thankfully no LOLCats. The shop is a small, dark, cool (as in not warm – not as in…actually I have no idea what is cool these days) confined area which requires that you obey, under threat of acerbically directed tutting, the rules of the one way walking/shuffling system. If you forget to pick up the milk and you are at the fudge bar section then you go back round again, doubling back is more than frowned on – it’s dealt with by a well aimed tin of beans and a sarcastic putdown. I shuffled in only to be met two foot through the door by the local undertaker.

“How’s you doing?”, inquires he as he shuffled towards me in his mournful work ensemble. He had a Daily Mirror under his arm and a can of Lilt in his hand. Lilt? Isn’t that a bit jovial, a bit too much like fun for a chap who deals with the recently dead?

He was beaming down at me with what appeared to me to be a far too enthusiastic grin. Why was he enquiring how I was, out of politeness or was he canvassing for business? I had been feeling a bit peaky, maybe he could tell.

“I’m great, never been better, brilliant”, I shouted with forced glee as I squeezed past him. “None of your bloody business”, I muttered as I got to the chilled drinks cabinet. But the chilled drinks cabinet was bare, empty save for two cans of Lilt and one of diet Lilt. It was like old, Caribbean, Mother Hubbard’s fridge. Chilled and refreshing drinks – DENIED. I was not in the mood for a walk to another shop. I wandered on round the one way system to what used to be the confectionary shelving but was now just shelving. What was going on? There was the definite feel of shenanigans and malarky afoot at the local shop.

“We’re closing on Tuesday”, snapped the usually chatty Sharon at my simple and honest inquiry.

“Closing? On Tuesday? What does that mean?” I was aghast at this news.

“It means that on Wednesday we wont be open.” Sharon was clearly not up to explaining what was going on for what was probably the thousandth time that day. I didn’t push it. I may have lost my local Mars Bar supply but she was losing her job. We all have our troubles eh.

I stumbled onto the pavement, sans chilled drink or any form of confectionary, and just wandered, punch drunk like, towards the evil Tesco supermarket. The news of the impending closure of the shop, as The Cousin and I called it, was difficult to comprehend. Where would we go when we fancied a bar of chocolate at ten to nine of an evening? And what would happen if The Cousin had used all the tea bags and Tesco was shut? I couldn’t imagine, I didn’t want to either, a world without my independent, slightly odd, but always open corner shop. I stopped to send The Cousin the news, I was in shock but I still knew before him. Heh.

I lifted my head up from my phone to find that I was now outside the Boulangerie/Tanning Salon. Why, in a country where we count our summer in hours rather than weeks and months, are most tanning salons a side project of other businesses? Okay the tanning salon was there before the fancy French bread shop but before that it shared space with a less than fancy Irish bread shop and before that it was a tanning salon slash video shop. You would think that seeing as we get about 20 hours of sun a year that tanning salon owners in Belfast would be like the Irish equivalent of Bill Gates or one of those fellas and have no need to sub-let to other ventures that are a million miles away from what they do. I passed another recently that was sharing with a, wait for it, auto supply shop! Who’s using that service? Spark plugs and a ten minute top up please? How odd.

This distracted me for a moment and I forgot that I was supposed to be getting a chilled and refreshing drink and instead headed home. It was only when I was back in the house without broadband, for a house without broadband is not a home, that I realised that I had no chilled and refreshing drink and still no broadband. Which compounded my glumness.

So let me offer you this word of advice dear sweet readers, love what you have whilst you still can because you never know when your broadband service is going to go down, your local shop owner is going to get into a fight with his landlord and close up for good in a moment of madness and when you are going to get distracted by peculiar business mash ups (as the kids might call them) and forget what you went out for in the first place.

It’s been a ghastly few days…