When I was going round the houses with this back in the day, I ended up phoning Seattle twice and twice I was cut off when my mobile Phone money ran out. Then I tried to phone them on my land line and discovered then that the landline phone was fucked. So I bought a new landline phone, but by then I'd grown in resentment against the time the machines took from me, and hadn't the heart to proceed.

        So many false dawns, but today I decided was going to be the day. So I spent the usual hour or so on the laptop, trying passwords, looking for phone numbers and all that jazz. Eventually, I got on the landline and phoned Seattle. 

        I had managed to get to the bit on the computer where it asked me for the Expiry date of a visa debit card long since discarded (fraud. Bugger all to do with me! As usual). I managed to get to to this part of the conversation with the person in Seattle and then we could go no further. None of this asking you your maw's maiden name. Naw. What is the expiry date of a debit card you stopped using years ago? Sorry. Okay, after thirty five years plus of meditations, you'd hope not to go into meltdown at this point, but I'd expected the business of working for the machines would last all afternoon, so I phoned the bank to see if I could get the required expiry date.

          There's a half hour queue for the bank on the phone, so I walked down to the bank branch nearest me. Lo and behold, they did have the details. I went back down the road and phoned Seattle again. A different person answered the phone. We got down to the bit where the person asked me about the expiry date. I told them the expiry date. They said this still wasn't enough for them to re-open my account. I could set up a new account. I asked if my eleven books on the old account would switch over automatically.

             At this point I was just about finished with the e-book world. If they told me that the books weren't going to fly from one account to the other automatically, there was no way I was going to spend the time doing it. Dave Bayliss did most of it for Kindle.

            But when I mentioned the eleven books, the person said they'd make an exception and open the account for me. This was an interesting response. Very much a human response. The person maybe had some discretion and didn't like the sound of weeping Scotsmen. Not a machine.

            I tried to buy a book in celebration at getting back into Amazon. That machine still doesn't work, but at least I won't have to phone Seattle. I'll get that sorted out manana.

            I put an old photie (a favourite!) on this post because I still can't get the photies to go from the phone to the computery thing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.