Country Living with Francis Farragher

There are times when I truly believe that I have a jinx on technology whether it be problems with mobile phones, websites, bookings, PCs or online banking and this despite having, what could be described as a half-decent yellow-pack working knowledge of our modern gadgets.

On an evening last week while trying to perform the relatively routine [or so I thought] task of booking a short hotel stay in the capital, the hotel website insisted that I was inserting both the wrong postal code and mobile number.

As if by magic, I thought I had resolved the key clue when I had to switch flags from the Union Jack to the Tricolour but even after surmounting this hurdle, I got the ‘oops’ line that there was a problem with my payment.

The ultimate humiliation in all of this occurred a couple of hours later when I enlisted the help of a family member. I was keen to show her the crux of the problem, but hey presto, everything went through on the first go. I didn’t really know whether I was happy or seething . . . okay the transaction was confirmed, but I’m convinced that the technology Gods just did this just to spite me.

In the midst of this little technological impasse, as I went to check a bank account [on the phone of course], I was confronted with a message from Bank of Ireland, that I was being refused entry on the basis that several attempts had been to ‘get into’ my account.

At that stage technological paranoia had taken over my brain and for a minute or two until I regained my composure, I believed that there was some kind of conspiracy afoot to ‘wear me out’ with IT afflictions.

Anyway, with a little help along the way from people who know about things like bank accounts and getting them reset, I managed to reconnect with my modest monthly pot of money . . . but without ever speaking to a live human. All were recordings, numbers, new pins and statistics that determine my future here on Mother Earth. The old ‘DOB’ statistic is getting to be a matter of slight concern!