[Hampshire] wifi woes

Since my recent (failed!) attempts to get wifi working on my ThinkPad X30
(Etch), dmesg returns nothing but:

ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wifi0: link becomes ready
wifi0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
wifi0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:11:50:e1:a7:83
wifi0: LinkStatus=1 (Connected)
wifi0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:11:50:e1:a7:83
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wifi0: link becomes ready
wifi0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
wifi0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:11:50:e1:a7:83
wifi0: LinkStatus=1 (Connected)

(etc., etc.)

wifi0 is reported as "not configured".

Could anyone explain to me what is happening and what I should do about it?

If it's "not configured", why should the boot procedure bother with it at
all?

Chris.