PC Hell

Today got off to a rather panicky start. My new computer was still glitchy, so I took it back to PC World at 9am. I was astonished to find an entirely empty store; not just devoid of customers, but completely without staff. There was no-one behind the tills. No-one in the "PC Know How" corner. There was a girl sitting behind the mobile phone counter - texting - who resolutely refused to acknowledge my presence, even when I started to film her! 

A man, carrying a hoover, eventually waddled over and explained that he was short of staff, and that it was company policy, in any case, for the engineers, who fix computers, not to come in until 11am "when it's busier." Sometimes the logic of the insane can be breathtaking. 

I went back at 11 and sat for an hour as they tried to find my name on the system, only to discover that there was no record of my ever having purchased the computer, or any insurance for it. After phoning my bank, it transpired that my name had been inputted into their system as Mr Benjamin and that as a result I didn't have effective insurance. To make matters worse, my broken computer couldn't be replaced because it was now out of stock. I was given a set of unsatisfactory alternatives. They could get an exact match for me in 3 days, possibly tomorrow, I could have a display version for a £10 reduction in cost, I could have a full refund (but no computer to work on) or I could have a computer with a worse spec for the same price. It was like a virtual version of Sophie's Choice.

I got desperate for the loo, but they wouldn't let me use the staff toilets so I was forced to wee behind a tree outside. 

Not good. Just not good. 

In the end I did a deal on a computer with half the memory of the one that had broken, but negotiated an extra storage unit thrown into the package, to make up for the short-fall in memory.  

I got back home, loaded all the absolutely necessary programmes onto my new computer, huffed and puffed a bit, ate some spaghetti on toast, and by the time I'd started work again, it was 3pm; a full six hours of my day wasted by ineptitude and the shambolic, disinterested  nature of PC World. 

It seems that Margaret Thatcher has died. It's a bit of an anti-climax, really. I've sort of imagined this day. I don't really like the thought of anyone dying, but she was, in my view, a desperate, ghastly, ruthless woman. I think history will view her as a unpleasant and probably impressive necessity, but I will never be able to forgive her for what she did to the miners and the teachers, and for that matter, the entertainment industry. I'm genuinely surprised that no-one, apart from the IRA ever took a proper pop at her, but then, by the end, she was just a silly old woman without any sense of the person she'd been in the 80s, so I guess there was little point in getting too worked up about her.

I am reminded of CND marches as a child, with hundreds of people screaming "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Out Out Out." I genuinely grew up thinking she was an ogre. 

That said, I heard a priest on the radio this morning preaching forgiveness, not relating to Thatcher, but it did strike me that forgiveness is a noble thing. He also said, and this is probably the last time I'll quote a catholic priest in this blog, "we should all be aiming for the day when the power of love overcomes the love of power,"  which I thought was rather lovely. I loathed Thatcher, but respect her for having not just a vision, but the courage of her convictions to see it through. All subsequent British leaders have loved power too much to do anything other than try, at all costs, to remain in power. And that is surely worse?