This is a scream of anguish and a shout of anger and a whine of self-pity. When all systems are GO (which is seldom) Life and Work are a dream. Everything goes smoothly. You get a lot of work done. Pleasure comes without pain. BUT

glitch noun (informal): a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or fault of equipment: a draft version was lost in a computer glitch.• an unexpected setback: the only glitch in his year is failing to qualify for the Masters.• Astronomy a brief irregularity in the rotation of a pulsar.verb [ no obj. ] chiefly US: suffer a sudden malfunction or fault: the elevators glitches. ORIGIN 1960s (originally US): of unknown origin. The original sense was ‘a sudden surge of current’, hence ‘malfunction, hitch’ in astronautical slang.

Glitch is NOT informal; it is NOT slang. It is diabolical. It wrecks days, weeks, years and life. And there is no human help.

I'll go back a bit, not to other horrible things but to one thing among them that led to this. For reasons I will not go into, I had two e-addresses. When I cancelled one (it took a while and it cost me time and effort and confusion and money and loss of faith in a helper who shall be nameless (but he knows who he is), it took a while to clear it and let everyone know. I think that's where the initial confusion came from. I had a digital daily subscription to the New York Times, taken out in 2015 when I went on my Round-the-World-in-180-Days trip (shortened to 79 days owing to circumstances beyond anyone's control), because I couldn't have a Paper delivered to my cabin door at sea.. Okay. I was being billed monthly on my Apple/iTunes account and everything worked, until my e-address was changed, as I say, some time last spring.

Then the NYT became capricious, on and off, forgetting who I was and disappearing or thinking I was a monthly candidate for subscription, to be lured on with 10 free-to-read columns a month, and so on. My Cooking document must have been erased. This started in June or July and I couldn't seem to find an e-address to tell them what was going on. It takes time and patience to tackle a problem like this. You have to set a day and stay dogged. I had work to do and couldn't spare much time and my doggedness was in short supply. Finally, near the end of the year my beloved computer guru came and fixed the glitch - sort of. She cancelled the subscription and I actually was credited with two refunds (for two months of the nine or ten I had been charged with and paid.) She advised me not to start a new subscription until the new year when all might be resolved and clear. Okay. I waited and took out a new subscription. I guess it was good for about a month and then the old tricks started turning up: on again off again; ten free columns and qui; or on for a brief time each day, and no mini-crossword in sight. This went on for a few months - all the while I was being charged a monthly fee - until it it quit altogether.

Yesterday I booked myself for an all-day frustration session to try to sort it out. I had found a magic phone number (previous emails to subscription departments and on line searches through iTunes had been unproductive). I called an 800 number putting me in direct contact with the NYT. NOT direct. A series of mechanical voices asked for my complaint ("digital only"), account number, the phone number I was using etc. IT (still not human) said I was billed through iTunes and told me to get in touch with my Apple account. IT actually gave me a phone number.....maybe, maybe I was going to get a human voice? NO such luck.

First, it wouldn't accept my Apple ID. First, Second and Third, too, but finally it acknowledged me and I progressed to another obstacle: finding my way through iTunes to my account and the record of my expenditures. This is all online, still no human voice. Finally, after several attempts I got a record of my expenditure: a year's subscription paid up until January 2019. If that was so, why was I being charged monthly? If that was so, why was I not receiving my daily digital news? IT said (online, print only) that I could cancel and my subscription would resume in January 2019. No possibility apparently of ever opting OUT forever.

Still no human voice.

Has anyone noticed how easy it is to sign up for something? Has anyone discovered how hard it is to get help or out?

The day was a no-good, horrible, frustrating, useless, unproductive day. I don't feel any better now that I've told you what I went through and I still don't have my NYT digital daily. I'm too old for this. I wish I were a Luddite.

This is not a blog.

Here is a wide variety of words picked up from my recent TLS reading. As usual I knew some of them but check them again for accuracy. Fun.

jerboa noun: a desert-dwelling rodent with very long hind legs that enable it to walk upright and perform long jumps, found from North Africa to central Asia. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: modern Latin, from Arayarbū‘ .

paratext ˜ Not in the online dictionary but my guess is that it's related to paraphrase:

paraphrase verb [ with obj. ]: express the meaning of (something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity: you can either quote or paraphrase literary texts. noun: a rewording of something written or spoken. scattered here and there in the text are frank paraphrases of lines from Virgil, Cicero, and Quintilian. [ mass noun ] : it is characteristic of poetic metaphors that they are not susceptible to paraphrase. DERIVATIVES paraphrasable adjective, paraphrase: adjective ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (as a noun): via Latin from Greek paraphrases, from paraphrazein, from para- (expressing modification) + phrazein ‘tell’.

pangolin noun: an African and Asian mammal that has a body covered with horny overlapping scales, a small head with an elongated snout, a long sticky tongue for catching ants and termites, and a tapering tail. Also called scaly anteater. ●Family Manidae and order Pholidota: genera Manis (three species in Asia) and Phataginus (four species in Africa). ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from Malay peng-guling, literally ‘roller’ (from its habit of rolling into a ball). [Just think ant-eater.]

I think I looked this one up quite recently. Do you remember it? bricolage noun (pl. same or bricolages) [ mass noun ]: (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things. the chaotic bricolage of the novel is brought together in a unifying gesture. • [ count noun ] something constructed or created from a diverse range of things. bricolages of painted junk. ORIGIN French.

bibliotherapist This also is not in the online dictionary but I think the meaning is clear? I might be in need of one.

fettle noun [ mass noun ]condition: Marguerite was in fine fettle. verb [ with obj. ]trim or clean the rough edges of (a metal casting or a piece of pottery) before firing.• N. Englishmake or repair (something). ORIGIN late Middle English (as a verb in the general sense ‘get ready, prepare’, specifically ‘prepare oneself for battle, gird up’): from dialect fettle‘strip of material, girdle’, from Old English fetel, of Germanic origin; related to German Fessel ‘chain, band’.

Okay: we've all used the phrase 'fine fettle', haven't we? But I never knew the meaning of the verb it comes from. Learn something every day. Can you use it?