Well, I have broadband at home again. It turns out that BT have, over the years, changed the way you need to set up your modem to connect to their broadband service. And they never told their old users about this.
So, suddenly, over the weekend the old scheme stopped working and we lost broadband access, which drove Lorna up the wall while I was away. Support was able to tell me what to do and, after an hour’s hunting for the modem configuration instructions (“Can’t you just download them?” aked Lorna. Uuuuh, no…), I got everything up an running.
It’s quite an achievement from BT, though. This an issue designed to irritate its most loyal customers. Very clever, that.