Yesterday I had to stop Robert Plant in the middle of Black Dog, unplug the earphones and let the big, bad modem slide in to take up the entire left side of the keyboard. On the right we already had an iPod and a hard drive which meant the mouse had to stay out which meant I had to use the finger pad thing which opened a whole new dimension of frustration. I hate this modem. Some days I want to tie it around my ankle and jump in the pool. And don’t even think about blaming the size of my laptop. It’s not that. It’s this tampon sticking out the side of it.

On the occasion it does work I’m greeted on screen by some dude from the pages of Men’s Health staring longingly into his silver laptop drinking water from a tumbler. Who the hell drinks water from a tumbler? This happens every time – Men’s Health and me staring at our computers as Vodafone Mobile Connect Lite looks for a network. For three minutes. I can kill 10 chickens in less time.

Call ma a cheap ass, but I pay as I go. To do this with Vodacom you have to buy airtime, switch sim cards, load the airtime, SMS mymeg some bullshit to 100 and wait five minutes for something called “data bundles”. Added to the massive physical effort of extracting sim cards from hardware is that the Nokia 1100‘s sim card requires encouragement from a sharp object and my particular Nokia 1100’s back cover is off so I have to get a new piece of sellotape every time I upload another bunch of these so called “data bundles”. I mean really.

It’s beginning to dawn on me that I’m the only poepol in the country not on Cell C’s ridiculous 2GB a month for R1 500.They did a hell of a job burying that baby deep inside probably the worst ad campaign in the history of anything cellular or free G. I mean 3G. Wait. What happened there? Hey, if any of you mothers come out with a Free G package I’m yours. Sign me up, Frederick. Just make sure your modem fits into a squirrel monkey’s bladder.