Internet Server Prohibitors

I have a niggling problem. A bit like an itch that always needs to be scratched when you are talking to someone you would really like to impress.

There is an internet server here which really doesn’t like sending me emails. They arrive eventually, but I can actually time how long they take to fall into my in box. I have a list of friends who use this address and I know I have to play a waiting game. Four days was the worst, two days is the norm.

I have a friend, who lives the same town as me, who occasionally emails. Her notes wander via the rugby club, get drunk, fall in the local stream and flop into my inbox two days later.

Another friend, who lives in a town east of us (separated by a mountain), has the same e.t.a. with her emails. They wander up the mountain pass, sunbathe in the bay, then do their grocery shopping at a big centre north of us before sauntering in to say hello.

I get emails faster from a friend who lives on a ship than I do from my mate ten minutes walk away.

Being a technoduffie, this defeats me. Does the server need to wash, iron and pick off the fluff on the email first? Do the emails like to take a bubble bath and apply make up before leaving the server? Perhaps they have to take singing lessons every week, and my emails always arrive during class. Is it a plot? Perhaps I need to bribe someone deep in the bowels of some anonymous office block where the server is stored.

What counts for currency in the murky underworld of ISP’s?