After nearly a week without broadband I'm delighted to be reconnected. But it wasn't all plain sailing.

As I'm far from an expert with computers and remember the problems I had with the last  ISP I called in a couple of 'experts' who had put leaflets through doors. They dealt with all the paperwork involved with the changeover, (except the letter of cancellation) collected the 'livebox' and arrived this morning to set it all up.

Madame installed the new modem downstairs while Monsieur put in a 'wifi' thingummajig in Jay's computer upstairs. Now the Bear knew that the bedroom would be unlocked and despite the fact that he's feeling ill, he was hovering in wait for his chance to go into Jay's room. (Jay keeps his room locked and hides the key to stop Bear prying).

I followed upstairs and found him outside the door. 'Now is my chance to sort out the lightbulbs' he announced gleefully.

'No', I replied firmly, 'We've already tried that. It's not a case of replacing bulbs; it's the wiring and you are NOT going to climb about above the ceiling.'

Deflated, Bear went into the attic but I found him, a few minutes later, IN the room, looking around. He started when he saw me and muttered 'OK, I know I'm not wanted in here. But I'd burn his balls off if I had my way!'. And he grumbled downstairs.

It didn't take long to set up Jay's computer and Monsieur came down and handed me the key. Now he had to tackle the Bear's computer in our bedroom on the ground floor. A couple of coffees and quite a lot of swearing later it transpired that the wifi signal was not getting through, and they came to the conclusion that the fireplace was causing the problem.

They tried various technical acrobatics and whispered frantically to each other but in the end they had to admit defeat. Of course, Bear was not happy but there is absolutely no reason why he can't use this computer to send the few emails that he needs to - and he never goes on  internet explorer anyway.