I've said this before, but "Ah, bah!"

My phone is dead. Again.

This morning, it was both the phone and the broadband; and nobody's touched the cable since Friday, so I was hopeful that it would be a general problem rather than mine own. I still had to go into town, borrow the Lit & Phil's phone and make enquiries. There was a recorded message, to the effect that a problem was affecting the phone service in my area; which I assumed to include the broadband also, and went happily down to work.

Until I came home, to find the broadband back but the phone not. The message had said it would be fixed by 2.00pm. It is now 18.20, and still not fixed. So either the problem is greater than they thought, or I have an individual problem on top - and I can't find out now until tomorrow, when I shall have to go back and beg the indulgence of the Lit & Phil again. I hate this. Not quite enough to get myself a cellphone, but almost...

[In other news: does anybody know what arcane combination of keys I just pressed, that split this window into two with an identical iteration of the screen in each half? It was ... quite annoying, and I didn't know how to undo it, not knowing what I'd done; so I had to kill the window and start again...]