I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this week’s broadcast, since without access to my Virgin Media emails for 16 days now, (and counting!) it’s been incredibly difficult to put together, as the majority of what I use for the basis of the news Cleanzine brings you each week

is emailed to that account. For the foreseeable future – since an ‘emergency repair ticket’ won’t be raised unless I’m still unable to access my account late Monday afternoon – could you please kindly email me via [email protected] , for John Austen to forward to me? Please accept my apologies if you’ve emailed over recent weeks and are disgruntled that I’ve not responded, or that news you’d expected me to share hasn’t been included in our broadcasts… or if you’ve invited me to a launch or event and I’ve not, as you may believe, had the decency to respond. Did I see something from Mitie immediately before everything crashed on 15th, about an event in London for example? And are there others I’ve missed? I’m so sorry. 

In between scrubbing around for content for Cleanzine and desperately trying to recall which tickets I’ve been emailed that should be scanned for entry into theatre, festival or other event, (some of which are stupidly not logged in my calendar!) and initially enlisting the help of - and later arguing with - staff at Virgin’s noisy overseas call centres, my experiences with Virgin along with others like it have led me to think a great deal about our reliance on the Internet when it comes to just about every aspect of our lives these days, along with the way our service providers value our satisfaction (or not!) as their customers...

When we launched Cleanzine 23 years ago John and I were both on ‘dial-up’ Internet, which meant we had to unplug our landlines to be able to use it. Nowadays, as well as our cell phones’ mobile data, WiFi’s accessible throughout our homes and offices as well as being freely offered just about everywhere else and for me the Internet’s become the ‘go to’ for home entertainment such as catch-up TV and reading unbiased global news. Indeed when everything first crashed a couple of weeks back, I decamped to a comfy chair in my local JD Weatherspoon to produce Cleanzine. That it was a worthy several-time Loo of the Year Awards winner, with washrooms dating back to the time of (and possibly used by) Charles II, Nell Gwyn and Samuel Pepys, was the icing on the cake – although the ambience of the large ‘salon’, complete with armchairs and a sofa, was sadly spoiled by painfully noisy warm air hand dryers which thwarted my plans to produce Cleanzine from there. 

I’ll cover my ‘customer value (or not)’ comment another time, when I’m feeling lots less helpless and angry…