Last night and tonight too the site has been slow as geology, and just now I got a message that the server was "unavailable". There ain't that many of us trying to get on are there?

I've noticed that too. I thought it was just a local issue, but everything else seemed to hum along!

I have had some major slowness issues here too.

there was an attack against several sites that are also hosted on that same server. So the problem can be summed up as - hackers/spammers.

Here's the company's bulletin on the matter:

We have found multiple servers are facing wp-login attacks (where abusive users flood the servers with hundreds or thousands of requests trying to access wp-login.php files) and thus these servers are responding slower than normal through the web service. We are actively working on this issue at the moment. Please note that your websites will load slower than normal due to this problem.

Fortunately they have a good crew that takes on these issues and finds solutions. It would appear that we're back up to speed again today.

was one of the attackers no such agency?

It's the NSA. We were talking about shooting down drones yesterday.

and serendipity abounds. Thanks to the spammerkillers!