Feeling ill and general rubbishness

Yes I'm ill again, only a couple of months after I was ill the last time. This time it's a horrible sore throat that I've had since Tuesday evening. I was off work yesterday with it and am off again today, even though I hoped it would probably be on its way out by now. It's probably the worst sore throat I've had, normally I just get colds and feel bunged up and feverish. It feels like I've been eating razorblades, and sometimes it's really hard to swallow. Oddly, it feels better when I'm eating (although not chocolate, ouch).

I went to Boots just now and experienced my first of two examples of really rubbish customer service. I thought I'd go to an actual pharmacy so I could get something for my throat that's a bit stronger than an off-the-shelf thing like Strepsils which don't seem to be doing anything. So I went in and asked if they had anything for sore throats, to which a bored looking woman called Marianne gestured vaguely at the shelf behind her and said "we've got these, some are sprays and some are lozenges".

"Oh right...", I said. "Are any better than others, or for different types of sore throat?"

"These ones are sprays, throat sprays, and these ones are lozenges that you suck", replied Marianne.

Well thank you for that Marianne, I'm not sure I'd have known what to do with a lozenge if you hadn't explained it to me. So I had to just say "well that one's cherry flavoured, I'll have that one" and leave feeling rather dissatisfied. Normally I've found pharmacy assistants really helpful and they've said which brand they think is best, or asked some questions about your symptoms. Apparently Marianne attended the Halfarsed School of Pharmacy though and doesn't go in for all that.

My second example of rubbish customer service is courtesy of Orange, to whom I've been complaining regarding my Mum's email. Basically (I won't bore with details), sometimes she can send mail and sometimes she can't because the SMTP server refuses the connection or is down, and it can last more than a day before it comes back up again.

I've complained to them before about this, and generally they fob you off with a copy-pasted answer on checking your Outlook settings, and then eventually they say there's been a local issue which has now been resolved.

So anyway, I sent them an email on Wednesday saying the problem still hadn't gone away, explaining what the symptoms were, and saying nothing has changed on my system (I was pretending to be Mum) since it was working fine, so I don't believe it can be the settings.

A while later they replied with.... yes, a copy-pasted set of instructions about checking your settings, and a couple of questions tacked on the end asking if I can send email via their webmail (I can) and if I'm connecting to the internet using them as the ISP (I am). So I sigh, and reply.

Then yesterday someone else replied again with a different-but-not-that-different set of instructions on checking settings, and some more questions, including "can you send email from our webmail" and "are you using Orange as your ISP". YES YOU BLOODY IDIOTS, do you not even bother to read the emails sent to you?? So I've sent them quite a rude reply back saying I don't appreciate being asked the same question over and over again, and can they actually read my email this time and do something about it. And now it's all gone quiet for the last 24 hours. Maybe I've offended them...

Anyway, Kristian Digby has just come on the telly so I'm off to drool over him now. He's got tight jeans on today, he always wears nice clothes. Oh, and my cherry spray has sort of helped but not as much as I was hoping when I read that it contains the grand-sounding "benzocaine". I was hoping that would be a novocaine-strength product, but apparently it isn't.