I LIKE to think that I rule my little empire with a kindly hand.
I make no great and onerous demands upon my subjects – I ask no more than the service for which they were designed. Therefore I find it very hurtful when my simple requests are deliberately sabotaged.
Specifically these acts of defiance were perpetrated by both tellies, both phones and the pool pump – as evil a band of conspirators that you could come across.
I have to hand it to them, they organised their campaign with impressive, though despicable, cunning; They struck while Pete was in hospital, and unable to frighten them into subjugation.
The specifics of this mutinous outburst were: The big telly wouldn’t turn off. The little telly wouldn’t turn on. Pete’s phone also wouldn’t turn on, while my phone wouldn’t turn off.
This last was a real masterpiece – it refused to End Call, or to be turned off, and cost me 11€ by talking to nobody before I found someone who could thwart its ambition to bankrupt me.
Then the pool pump joined in and fell obdurately silent.
However, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and I knew those with the necessary skills, and who were not afraid to use them – with violence if necessary!
Though, to add insult to injury, those same people pushed exactly the same buttons as I had already pushed. The difference was that the machines were afraid of them and acquiesced humbly and without a murmur – they aren’t afraid of me!