Moving back into the flat in York, closely followed by a holiday has led to a whole range of problems… First, the phone company disconnected the phoneline when our tenants moved out, despite explicit requests to the contrary and their agreement, and then said an engineer needed to come round to reconnect. The request was made on 2nd December. They now say an engineer is coming on 18th January. That should sort the phone. Broadband will take another 10 working days. All this should simply have been in place when I returned from Seattle.

As previously mentioned, my flight to Egypt was cancelled. But that was on 18th December and I still don’t have the bag that was on the flight with me. I ended up buying a new ticket and am trying to get a refund on the first. Despite their inability to get me to Cairo, BMI flew my bag there. No-one answered any emails or phonecalls, so I had no way of knowing this. When I returned to London I was finally able to trace it, but that was five days ago, and still the bag has not been delivered. The insurance company are not returning my messages.

I came back from Egypt with some kind of food poisoning or virus, but it took me four days to get a doctor’s appointment. A payment for work done has finally arrived after some delay (sent to the wrong address), but the amount is a fraction of what it should be. A delivery that was supposed to arrive in early December finally arrived today, while I was out trying to find it at the local post office. Of course, they went away again so several phone calls were needed to get it.

But a glimmer of hope. Another incident of incompetence, with a professional filling out the wrong kind of form, but since it saved me £50 this is not one that I will be complaining about…