This is what compliance looks like

Well, it's been a long road, but our house has finally joined all the others in our neighbourhood, and now bears a 'smart' meter instead of an analogue one. If you look closely at the photo, you might see that its sign-in logo reads 'i-Tron'. It's not an i-Phone or i-Pad, but looks to be my very own virtual world of a video game (whichever film version you prefer, 1982 or 2010).

The saga has gone on since 2011 and has involved meetings, letters, online groups and altogether too much time, especially in light of this, the end result.

To give him credit, the installer was to date the most mannerly person I have dealt with over the course of

this story. And when I asked him whether he had any sort of job security, his answer was the unsurprising 'no'. That he didn't anticipate he'd be employed much longer, as they are now installing meters at many of the homes where we were holding out for sanity. Thus, his position (just as the jobs of all those meter readers) will disappear as being 'redundant'.

He also didn't seem to mind when I said I needed to go inside to close down the computer. He agreed that such action would be a good idea. The way they were slapping these up on their first time 'round, I doubt whether I would have been afforded that sort of luxury.

Even though I explained that my partner is an artist who'd hoped we'd be able to keep the old meter, for use in a project, he said he wasn't allowed to leave it behind. Hmm. Somehow I thought we'd have paid for it by now. Where will it end up? The landfill??

Anyway, we went as far as we could with challenging this bullheaded corporately dictated change, and finally gave up when their bullying went over the top and seemed to turn into out-and-out blackmail.

All we can say from here on in is the usual, I guess: Onward.