I’m currently in the process of getting life insurance, because now I’m a lady of a certain age, it is sensible to provision for the kids should it all go BOOM unexpectedly. All those adverts which state ‘no medical needed, just a few questions’ have no chance of ever giving you a decent lump sum, so I had to do the entire ‘just fill in these 35 pages and don’t you dare lie’ application and when they sent me back the answers, it transpires I missed a fairly vital piece in my family puzzle. My father’s had Type 2 Diabetes for a while, and was diagnosed (I believe) before he was 50, but as to when, I don’t know (and to be honest I doubt he could tell me.) The fact I have no desire to ask is neither here nor there, but for honesty’s sake I declared this.

Then, on Friday, I got a text message: CALL US NOW. So I did, and a lovely lady took a load more questions (plus checked I’d not lied on my form by double-checking some other answers) and then informed me if there were any issues, I’d speak to someone else before the cover was finalised. On Monday a letter arrived stating that I’d admitted an issue and that I needed to call them, but if this had already happened I could ignore this waste of postage and trees that was legally required to confirm they’d contacted me in writing. I assumed I was done, until the lovely lady who’s helping to complete the cover phones me and stated she thought I needed to call the company as well.

It is staggering, considering the world in which we now live, that it takes so long to get basic stuff done. It should not need two phone calls and a letter to confirm a simple change, but it does because all these people need to be employed doing something. If computers did all this with a 30 second algorithm there’d be cries of fowl and that you need the people in the equation for checks and balances, but that doesn’t happen. Nobody talks to anybody else, and if your computer system only updates once every 24 hours? WTF are you doing? That’s 23 hours of the day that everybody else ends up wasting and nothing happens. Woe betide you have to work out how to do stuff from scratch. You only have to look at the car-crash that is the Brexit ‘plan’ to understand what happens when you just decide to do something without organisation. The problem, of course, is that it’s either too much, or nothing at all. Middle ground, where everyone is helpful and happy, just doesn’t seem to exist.

It’s been two months and I’m still not covered. Maybe they’re hoping I die and then they won’t need to pay out. Perhaps nobody’s prepared to insure anything any more because of the volatile nature of society. All I know is that I’m getting fitter every day and this is becoming progressively more ridiculous, and I sure as fuck am very glad I didn’t leave this any later to sort out because honestly, what a fucking performance.

Talking of performances, was dragged by husband to KT Tunstall at the local venue. No, that’s not fair, I went willingly, mostly because I’m a great fan of anyone who can singlehandedly sound like a complete band with minimal effort. Last night I’ll admit I enjoyed her angsty styff more than her ‘I’m over my breakup here’s my cheery stuff’ but the audience were all up by the end so really, my opinion’s just that. I’d kind of hoped she’d do ‘Default’ by Atoms for Peace because this, without doubt, was the highlight of her last gig for me, and I’m a sad woman who knows what she likes.

At the end, my husband began acting a bit oddly, and I couldn’t work out what was going on, until it became apparent that the Scottish songstress had hurled her guitar pick into the crowd and it had hit him on the hand. A lot of frantic scrabbling then resulted in him picking it up and proclaiming a victory. This of course had to be Tweeted about, because well why not.

To explain: KT explained how she’d hurled various items into the crowd at previous gigs (including a kazoo and a drumstick) and managed to hit people in the process, and that legal action was always a concern. My husband’s hand is uninjured, hence the assertion we won’t be contacting lawyers, because they’re even slower than the bloody insurance people. It took a while, but I’m glad to see that the good lady responded.

This yet again proves my assertion that if you talk to your heroes, you’re always in with a chance of a response.

The future isn’t instant communication or days waiting, it remains somewhere in between. If you can maintain that balance, then you’re doing it right.