Behind a cut because it's long, it's real life and contains several moments that make you (or me, at least) want to bang your (my) head against a wall, or similar large, hard, unresisting object.

Work is doing my head in - more than the usual post-holiday going back to work thing. I work in an office that's not the main building but is only a couple of minutes away. Our link back to the main office, and therefore the server, has been slow for ages. But about a month ago it went really bad, and kept going down completely. It's been really slow ever since and going down occasionally.

Sometime while I was away it got worse - and worse still this week. Yesterday it went down twice before 10am, again just before lunch, just after lunch and about 4pm. Each time it lasts for about 15mins. I'm really busy at the moment, so you can imagine how much that helps.

I haven't been wanting to go over to the main site because my back's a bit dodgy at the moment and sitting at someone else's desk never helps. But between about 2 and 3 o'clock this afternoon it would be up for about 2 minutes then down for 15 and it just got ridiculous. So I got quite a bit of work done the rest of the afternoon, although I also got an aching neck and a headache. But I was only there for about 2 hours (at going home time I chanced it back at my desk and it only went down once in the hour I was there), so it went away quite quickly. So looking forward to tomorrow...

Just to put the icing on the (dairy, gluten and egg-free chocolate) cake (what's the point of a non-chocolate cake?) I have 6 things I need to get done by the end of this week. I've so far managed one. I will get two of the others done tomorrow. Now, as far as I was concerned on Monday I only had three things due - one of which we'd got an extension on from Thursday - that's the one I got done today).

We have a really complicated set-up that means we have a department who are also their own company, based in another part of the country, who get in their own work that also need my department to work on it. Which is fine, except for the part where they don't like to tell us too much in advance and always manage to cause us great hassle. Part of the reason why we're so busy this week is because one of the other two people in my department spent half the week on one of their projects that in theory was all done and dusted.

So, not only did I end up with three things to do for them by the end of this week - one of which isn't due till next Friday but the end client is apparently hassling - but they hassle me about them twice a day. Our line is pretty much if you can't make the effort to tell us you need work doing it's certainly not going to be top of our to-do list. So we've been realistic with them, told them we can't promise the timings they want but we will try. A message repeated twice a day.

The most fun part came this afternoon, after I'd been hassled for data and told them the same thing we have been all week. Then they emailed my boss to ask the same question, he gave them the same answer. So they replied to ask the same question, he gave them the same answer. As my boss pointed it, it's a pity there's no way to punch down the phone. We experimented instead with my alien who falls down walls when you throw them at said walls. Except he actually just falls off, which is much more boring.

While this is going on I'm having hassle with three different online deliveries.

First there is play.com who I ordered Bugs off in January. Having made my way up to 2/3rds of the way through series four I found the last DVD wouldn't work in any of my three DVD players. So I sent it back to play.com and they delivered a replacement last Friday, which I picked up Monday on my way to work. I thought I'd better check all the DVDs work, so was just looking at the backs of them initially until I realised some of them looked awfully familiar. They'd sent me two lots of series 4 and none of series 2. I'm hoping for third time lucky.

Back in the middle of March I ordered some bras as Beales couldn't quite manage more than two in my size, and none in black. Nothing happened for a while and a week before Easter I rang them up. They spoke to the people they get this brand from, in Germany, and said they might be there the Thursday before Easter. I actually needed a black one on the Saturday for Conference, so of course they didn't turn up. I fully expected to find them waiting for me when I got back from the Lake District.

I don't know why I thought that, I really didn't. I rang them up this afternoon and they told me they'd been dispatched on the 25th. They sent me an email just after I rang them to say it had been dispatched and my credit card had been charged. So, I continue to live in hope.

In mid-March again, I was extravagent and ordered myself all the Emma Peel episodes of The Avengers on Region 1 DVD from Amazon used & new as it was cheaper than Amazon.com which was the only other place I found it that delivered to Britain. This cost me £70, so not a small amount of money. The sender said it was take about 7-10 working days which didn't sound unreasonable given it had to come from America.

12 working days later I emailed the sender. I still haven't had a reply. But I looked at the senders feedback and found someone had said they ordered something that didn't turn up till 2 weeks after the sender said it would arrive and no reply from sender upon querying. So I waited a bit longer, confidently expecting it to be waiting for me when I got back from the Lake District.

And was it? Was it bollocks. Upon looking at the feedback now I found other people who hadn't had what they'd paid for and someone who was taking it up with amazon. So now that's what I've done - I suspect the sender went awol sometime about the time I ordered the DVDs.

I'm really wanting my money back. Now of course the cheapest option on amazon used & new is £80, but the price has gone down on amazon.com and I worked it out to be about £55 (although I dreamt about it last night, so now I'm not 100% sure about that). I just have to wait for a resolution before I do anything now.

If we only got rid of the people the world would run so much more smoothly...

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