Evenings with a Visitor

Come in. Make yourself at home

Green Tree Frog goes for a ride. A slightly fuzzy photo of a frog inna box. © Bronwen Scott.

On most evenings, my schedule runs like this:

I

Panic about all the things that I should have done during the day, but did not for various reasons.

Today’s reason is technological — the mobile phone signal, which has been perfectly acceptable up until now, has suddenly gone from four bars to one. Well, one if I’m lucky. It is all over the place and the telco verdict is that my location is now ‘marginal’. Neither house nor phone tower have moved since Sunday morning when everything was fine, so I am unconvinced by this explanation.

The upshot of this is that my use of the phone as a hotspot for the computer is becoming…difficult.

But what is really annoying is the amount of time wasted in dealing with telcos for no obvious benefit. The scepticism that greets your explanation. The hours spent on the processs. Apart from all the calls, I made a 56 kilometre round trip to get a replacement SIM, and I still have dreadful reception and excruciatingly low download speeds.

Anyway…

II

The second part of my schedule is the frog eviction.

On most evenings, at some time between 7 and 8 pm, I will hear a single thud in the kitchen. It…