The trials and tribulations of rural broadband

Rural broadband is fraught with slow speeds and unexpected outages following wind and weather or unexpected birds or leaves on the line or whatever. It leaves us at the mercy of BT Openreach and, like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know which engineer you're going to get.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556616835167868168/

Over the years we've had the know-it-all one, the tirelessly-climbing-each-pole-between-us-and-the-exchange-in-the-snow one, the one-the-dog-jumped-on one, the I'm-the-boss-and-this-has-all-been-done-wrong-by-idiot-underlings one, the really grumpy one (who left bits of equipment behind) and last, and probably most important of all, the I'm-going-to-give-you-sensible-advice-so-it-doesn't-cost-you-an-arm-and-a-leg one.

He was an interesting chap, from the valleys, and he liked to pop outside for a fag while the machinery did its calculations. He checked the line, measured it between where it comes in, via the socket in Mum's part of the house, scratched his head, had another fag, fixed the fault and told Brian part of his life story and then related the rest to Mum while he discovered what and where the fault was and that it wasn't yet terminal but soon would be.

As he was leaving, he explained there was a conflict between our phone and broadband, exacerbated by the 8.9m of wire between the line entering the house, splitting (we have two lines) and then wandering around the room to our PC. Basically, it shouldn't work and it won't for much longer and we should think about getting it fixed or face big bills.

Via Pinterest

Which is when the penny dropped. We hardly use our landline; we mainly use mobiles like the rest of the population. Mum does use her line and wanted to keep it, so hers would be useful in emergency for us. The broadband now comes in that way (she gets much faster speeds on her line) and then to our PC and wifi router via ethernet cable. I've just speedchecked it and it's faster.

So today it was goodbye Plusnet and thank you. They seemed miffed that we were leaving, but let us go with good grace and a disconnection fee of just under a tenner. That's a small price to pay to say goodbye to all the calls from Indian call centres (one famously called me 'fatty' to my answerphone because I didn't pick up!) No more Swansea call centres offering to sell us solar panels (we've got those) and double glazing (ditto) or a new boiler (they haven't yet laid a gas main in the Preseli Hills, so, no.) And no more PPI calls! Yippee! Now I've just got to keep my mobile number a secret....

So much has happened...

It's so long since I last blogged here and so much has happened. In my last post we were nervous about a trip to Cardiff to see the consultant about H13's spine.

We were right to be nervous. That was October 2013 and trips to Llandough Hospital soon became the norm. X-rays showed that H13's back was forming itself into an S-curve - a severe scoliosis. Surgery was inevitable and eventually last year we found ourselves in University Hospital Wales for H13 to have a quite massive operation.

For one so young H13 faced so many challenges. She had the operation aged just 12. She had to consent to it herself and confirm she understood that a complication of surgery could be - unlikely, but could be - paralysis, but when your spine is tightening at both curves of an S, you can't really say no.

The operation itself took five and a half hours, plus a further three hours to come round from the general anesthetic and the massive amount of morphine required to relax the spine enough to allow the surgeons (there were at least three of them, plus two anesthetists and various nurses) to straighten out the spinal kinks. The surgeons installed a rail and a rod, the full length of the spine, plus 19 titanium screws (which cost a mind-boggling £550 each. I'm glad we didn't have to pay).

There there was a stay in the high dependency unit - just overnight, H13 is made of really tough stuff - and four days in a separate room on the children's ward. I stayed with her 24/7, sleeping on a sort of rock hard armchair bed thing alongside her hospital bed and smuggling coffee onto the ward (or I'd have gone nuts!)

My sketch of H in her hospital bed - I sketched to pass the time while she slept.

The nurses were amazing, astonishingly so. Ditto the physios, who had H13 up and walking in three days, then measured her to find she'd grown in height by two and a half inches. There were fun bits (the pre-med which made her laugh constantly, then afterwards standing up for the first time and finding that a) she was nearly as tall as me and b) that she looked 'normal' now) and there were awful times - the eerie screams of sick children in the dead of night, the tiny baby fighting for life in the HDU, the removal of the two wound drains.

We went home on the Friday, a record time for recovery considering the operation had only been on the Monday; scoliosis patients normally stay in hospital seven to ten days. Brian drove between Pembrokeshire and Cardiff almost every day which cost a fortune in petrol. It was much easier back at home (I could get food to eat, that was a good thing!) H13 started eating again too (it took two weeks, but her appetite came back eventually). We spent the summer watching films, including a binge-watch of the entire Twilight saga. We managed occasional trips out and spent a weekend in Devon with friends, but it was tough as H13 tired easily.

H13 went back to school in September, part-time at first, but she sometimes didn't survive a full day. Once I had to rescue her after she was knocked into the wall by a couple of boys having a mock-fight in the corridor. But she got stronger and missing days of school didn't affect her as she proved by getting excellent results in her Christmas exams, including 100% in both parts of her science exam, and over 90% in pretty much all of the others too. We're really fortunate in that her teachers allowed her to decide what she could cope with, didn't panic when she missed lessons and trusted her to keep up with the work.

The day before the operation H12 (as she then was) ran the Race for Life in Haverfordwest. She plans to run it again in June this year, as a sort of full stop to a difficult 12 months and to demonstrate her return to fitness.

* This post has been read and approved by H13.