It’s Christmas Eve 2013 and something has happened.
There has been a bad storm
come across the Atlantic Ocean and caused chaos in the UK just before the
holiday period. It has been pretty rough here too with very strong gale force
winds and very heavy rain.
We were happily watching the
problems in the UK on the Daily Telegraph web site when all of a sudden the
internet ceased to function on my computer.
On setting out to see if the
neighbours had a telephone service I noticed our telephone wire running from
the supply pole close to the house had been re-routed around the sharp edge of
a new electricity.... well it’s not really a pole, rather a junior pylon that
has been erected during a planned replacement programme of electricity service
in our area.
This junior pylon is right
next to where its predecessor was located but just a bit nearer to our roadway.
Consequently and maddeningly previously unnoticed by myself, this new junior
pylon is in direct line between the spindly wooden telephone supply pole and our
house. Our and only our, telephone wire has to negotiate this super new mini
pylon and its even newer sharp cement edges. Even more maddeningly, the gales
of last night and today have happily rubbed the said wire up and down the sharp
cement surface sufficient now, to stop our phone working.
Of course like many maddening
things, it is a bank holiday tomorrow, Christmas Day, and the nice lady at our
telephone company I spoke to, from our neighbour's phone (all working nicely,
thank you,) did say that she would report the problem straight away but it
would take two or three working days to fix!
I’m just thankful that I live
in France as Thursday is “Boxing Day”,
here it isn’t, it’s just another “working day”; working day one! Friday
is working day two, so depending on how much other storm damage there is to fix
we could be in with a chance of being back on line by the week end........ if
we were still in the UK, when are the next “working days” after Christmas Day?
They could be the 2nd
or even 3rd of January!
Mind you, there is another
alternative, while Ruth is looking the other way I could just get my extension
ladders out and splice it myself, tomorrow...!
Postscript:
We were out visiting friends
for lunch on Thursday (26 Dec), on returning we could see our phone was fixed.
A bright shiny metal band had been mounted on the junior pylon and our phone
line duly attached to that...all clear and working...
Within 1 working
day....cheers France Telecom!
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