You get very little sympathy when you tell people your 50mb broadband isn't working. It's like saying your Ferrari is bust...

So yesterday was April Fools Day then eh. A day set aside for pranks and leg pulling and even gentle joshing and I'm up for that. Never let it be said that Manuel doesn't appreciate the finer points of a well thought out and fantastically executed practical joke. Why I even posted my own little jape to baffle, confuse and gently poke fun at with you. Oh yes over the years I have chortled, guffawed and been left red faced having fallen for everything from adverts for left handed mars bars to fake news reports of improbable and impossible tunnels from here to Portadown. I've been caught out, I've laughed and I have enjoyed the annoying nonsense that comes with the early hours of the 1st of April. Jolly japes, I'm for them.

Tell you what I'm not for and definitely didn't sign up for was the ball achery, head melting, genital wart of a day that it turned out to be. Laugh? Not even as much as a mirthful sigh all day.

The massive cockery started at about 5.30 am. Lets be honest nothing good ever starts at 5.30 am. I was woken from my peaceful slumber by the always exhilarating feeling of vomit filling my mouth. Crikey. Before I knew what was going on I had swallowed it and went back to sleep. Nice. Funnily enough I woke up again four hours later feeling decidedly unwell and with a rather disagreeable taste in my mouth. By disagreeable I mean my mouth tasted like what you would imagine it would taste like in Colin Farrell's mouth after a four week kebab and absinthe bender. Suffice to say it was not nice. 

But despite the taste in my mouth and the swirling round and round of my guts I was determined to carry on with my morning routine. This was my first day off in what felt like ages and I wasn't going to let a dicky tum tum keep me from enjoying it. 

Staring at the computer screen I noticed the unusually large number of overnight communications. "623 new emails eh? That's a bit queer", I thought.

The next few minutes were some of the most sweary of my 36 years on Gordon's green earth. I clicked through email after email of Japanese spam, or at least Japanese filled spam. All 623 emails were as a result of spam having been left on this here blog. I swore. I swore and then some. I called on all the dark lords, demons, and Sandlers to fill me full of their satanic fury so that I might smite down the sender of spam. I cursed poxes on his house and the houses of all that new and befriended him. I wished pain upon him. Not your average every day toe stubbing pain but I mean real dark, mind melting pain like 72 hours back to back of Adam Sandler's "Chuck and Larry do something that's not funny but probably made him a million squillion dollars", or whatever it's called. 

I expelled such energy with the swearing and the shouting and summoning of dark lords and demons and Sandlers that I tired myself out and fell back on top of the bed and only woke up again a couple of hours later. I do not welcome unscheduled naps. Clearly when I woke up again I swore. I swore in the shower. I swore as I got dressed. I swore quite profusely as the toaster burnt my last two slices of bread. And what's with toasters that burn bread. It makes no sense. It's one sole job is to toast bread. Why does it have a setting that burns the bread? IT MAKES NO SENSE. 

Meh.

I deleted the contents of my spam filled inbox, I was doing it one at a time until I twigged upon the select all button,  and set up word verification on the blog and then got on with the day just a few hours later than I had planned. I twittered and Facebooked and responded to non-spam emails. All was going quite swell and the spam attack from earlier was no longer causing me to spasm with rage and the pain in my tummy was easing. 

But then my 50mb friend decided it was it's time to play an April fool jape on me all of its own and promptly died, not completely, but as close to as would make a difference. That's right reader I swore. I swore so much that I ran out of all the good words and had to start inventing my own. But lets be honest nothing is as powerful or gets the point across as well as standing over an inanimate and unresponsive object and calling it a,"fucking useless pointless expensive piece of cunting bullshit..."

The modem just blinked it's one remaining blinky blue light at me in stoic defiance of my spit soaked swearing. 

I then spent a very long time being passed from one Virgin Media operative to another ending up getting passed by Vikram in India to Paul in Liverpool. They refused to pass me back despite pleading with them and explaining that I understood Vikram's broken English better than Paul in Liverpool's garbled attempt at it. Paul, god bless him, tried but alas all his attempts to reunite me with my 50mb broadband were futile. So another chap is coming between the hours of 8am and 5pm to kick life back into my modem. 

I fear for my sanity between now and then. I nearly read a book earlier but decided that we weren't quite there yet. But on the plus side the house has never been tidier. I was starting to chill out and relax by about 3pm. The pointlessness of swearing and kicking things and cursing my luck because apparent as I accepted that I would just have to wait for the nice man to come and fix whatever it is that needs fixed. So I offed myself to Tesco to get some food shopping done. Food would make me I happy I surmised. 

It was only when I was about to get served by the charming lady at the checkout with the fantastic array of badges and pins on her polo shirt that I realised something was amiss. All my purchases were laid out on the moving conveyor belt from the twister ice lollies to the giant packet of poo roll, the two items are not connected I should add. The queue behind me wasn't big but there were a few unhappy faces, aren't there always unhappy faces in supermarkets. I checked in my pockets. I checked in my pockets again. I checked in my shopping bag. But no wallet was to be found. "Could this day get any worse?",  I thought. 

But I did not swear. Which was as nice as it was odd. The man behind me did swear though which set off a chain reaction of swearing. I apologised to the woman with the fantastic array of badges and pins on her polo shirt and abandoned my purchases.

I've been hiding under the bed ever since and wont be coming out again until the man comes to make the broadband work again. Oh and as a final insult to my already shattered self my bin has been stolen. 

April Fools Day? I am very much against it and all it has to offer. 

This post was written using a very shoddy and almost pointless dial up thingy. I'll be back after the man has been.