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[ 4 minute read ]
Headless chicken syndrome
I have just had the most horrendous last couple of days. I have until recently been using a dumbphone despite owning a Samsung A32 5GB SmartPhone. The phone network I use has been repeatedly sending me texts saying stuff like, ' You are using a device that is not 4G or 5G compatible. We are going to shut down the 3G network. You will have no connection.' Or something like that.
On Wednesday, I had full internet and phone use until 10am. Then, nothing. No problem, I thought, I will simply put the SIM into the Smartphone. But wait, I was already using a 4G dongle for internet on my laptop. It stopped working. They have switched off 3G and I cannot get the 4G or 5G signal, I thought.
I am reading Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' and I really needed to have the internet to translate a lot of words. I had no idea I was so attached to internet connectivity. I struggled to make sense of the speech and gave the telephone network company some time to figure things out. Today, I had had enough and determined to just buy a normal broadband package with fibre optics and stuff. That meant putting money back into my bank account and minding that the direct debit for the SIM would not be paid before I bought the Broadband deal.
Whenever there is a problem and I am moving too fast I get delayed at home. Things happen to slow me down. My boot laces are knotted before I put them on (somehow they do this when I am not looking, or the Brownies do it) or I need to repeatedly go to the loo, or I spill coffee and it needs cleaning up. I was delayed leaving my home for the library, where I would be able to go online and search for a broadband package. I went into the Co-op to see if they have SIM cards for a pound that I could put in my phone to check for a signal. The library was shut so I went home and fiddled with a new SIM. By this time it had just gone 2pm and when I put my usual SIM back into my phone there was a signal so I used the same network to go into my account and there was a message saying they were aware of a fault and they have fixed it two minutes before I went into my account. If I had not lost seven or eight minutes I would have gone back to the library and paid almost 40 GBP for fibre optic broadband and had two SIMs with connectivity as well. My monthly bill, by contract, would have been over 60 GBP.
Sometimes, it pays to spread your problem over a wide spectrum of activity. I had been to the library the day before and I had left a series of questions with them. Is there an incidence of solar activity that is causing signal degradation? Has there been a recent EMP incidence that knocked out a signal repeater? Is there a problem with all mobile phones or just my telecom provider? The library staff assured me they would do their best to answer my questions and I would be able to collect the answers soon. It is possible that they contacted O2, the service provider to ask what the problem was. I obviously could not.
It may be that it was the library who first made 02 aware of a fault. By 14:08 today the fault was fixed.
In the meantime, I finished reading 'Twelfth Night' and do you know what? I got more out of it by having to work much harder in understanding the speech.
I still don't know why a woodcock is so significant in 1601 though; there is mention of it in 'Twelfth Night'. I know it is a game bird and it is incredibly difficult to hit because it constantly changes direction, height, and speed when it flies, but in Shakespeare's time?
Sometimes we need a shake-up to make progress. I wasn't bothered about falling behind with my studies because i am so far ahead that I have two months before I need to submit another assignment and the one after that I have already submitted. My calculations are such that I could even miss the third assignment due in February 2026 entirely and still pass the module, so I don't have to submit anything until 16th April 2026. There is a single student who tries to discredit me on a forum. One of his attempts to negate my posts is to say that one should not study ahead of the timescale for study when I posted last year that we might consider Black Swan events and should be aware that something may prevent us submitting assignments, even catching flu.
I write best early in the morning.