Spring Flowers

Firstly thank you sooooo much for the hearts for my photo of Hercules the steam train yesterday which got me to the 7th highest photo on Page 1 of Popular. I'd normally reply to you all individually, but it's been a challenging day! 

So nice to see the Spring flowers beginning to come out in the garden. It's been an annoying day, well mainly afternoon. This morning my doorbell was rung at 8:25 and a guy in safety equipment told me they were just about to start using a chainsaw to do some tree work in the field. When I asked it was to remove two trees and cut back another behind my new neighbour's bungalow (Gresham's still haven't done anything about the things I reported last Sept that were promised). Those trees were very close to the neighbour's fence and the branches badly overhung the garden. I mowed the lawn whilst it was already noisy.

For my record only:

This afternoon I decided to ring BT about my on-going internet reliability issues, discussed when I renewed my contract in Aug 22 and again in Apr 23 when they reset something at their end. I called customer services, where an automated system wanted to do some tests and ring me back. That call and waiting for the call back took about 10 mins. Then the call back put me in a queue for about half an hour, getting through to someone who had no test results to see. The next part of the call took 1 hour and 45 mins to get nowhere. He kept getting the problems I'd told him wrong, my kit wrong, it's location wrong, my contract wrong and so on. I checked cables, did a factory reset of the hub and did a couple of internet speed tests. He agreed that my hub being 7.5 years old was probably the problem as I'd suggested, and he said he couldn't send me a replacement but could transfer me to Sales so I could upgrade to a new contract with a better bit of kit. I kept repeating that I was already on a good contract, but them not upgrading the kit meant I wasn't getting the service I was paying for under that contract, and the answer is that they fix the problem, not that I pay more for a similar service with new kit. He kept repeating himself and putting me on hold, obviously so he could speak to his supervisor. I asked to speak to the supervisor directly and he at least agreed to send me a replacement hub of the same type (he said it was brand new, but they haven't sold it for years). It was clear that BT are now forcing existing customers to upgrade to get a replacement hub when faulty. I've asked for an email for raising a complaint, he's sent me a link, but the wrong one as it's for an address in Sydney Australia! Talking to the supervisor was like being in a meeting in W1A - at one point he said 'it's not a fault, but the equipment is in effect faulty'! So what a waste of 2.5 hours!