Things used to have an uncanny knack of going wrong when I was travelling to the States on business. Poor Carol would be left with a broken something to sort out and with no moral support. It seems to be happening again now that I’m a journeyman painter. (Poetic license – I never did an apprenticeship.)
On Monday afternoon, there’s Carol happily surfing away from the comfort of our conservatory when she suffers a wipe-out (to continue the surfing metaphor) – nada, nichts, rien ne va plus. “Bother”, she said, or words to that effect. After a while of patient waiting and still suffering from an ongoing zero-utility situation, she phoned Pipex (our ISP). After hanging on the phone for some 20 minutes she finally connected with a warm body but, since I’m the account holder, they didn’t want to speak to her at first. Fortunately, Carol’s powers of persuasion manage to convince them otherwise and there was apparently no problem at their end. (Is there ever?)
It was time to unplug all the phones and swap out all the ADSL filters to see what was what at our end. No change, of course. The wireless router was blinking its lights patiently trying to reconnect but all to no avail. We have an old BT ADSL modem but that was chez Paul, next door, who had just left. Try it in the morning.
Tuesday morning dawned to a still patiently blinking router unable to connect to the internet. However, before the old modem could be tried, at about 9:30 AM, the gremlins were magically exorcised and a very relieved router ceased its blinking as the world returned to normal.
Ah ha – this is a classic illustration of the well-known extension to Murphy’s Law. Murphey’s Law being “What can go wrong will go wrong…” and the extension, known to every female, is “..when Mr Murphy is away”.