The Daily Novel

The BT engineer arrived as I was finishing an early breakfast. He had to climb the telephone pole outside the house to get to the source of the problem. Two of the wires to the box there were seriously corroded. So the problems I have been having are nothing to do with what I have done. Proving once again that co-incidence often happens. The corrosion had obviously been happening progressively for some time. All I did wrong was to buy the house just at the time that the corrosion had got so bad that the line stopped working properly.

According to the engineer this does not necessarily prove that the problems getting Broadband up and running  resulted from the same cause. Because he said that broadband can work with only one good wire. So I cannot yet be certain that my broadband problems are over. But at least I have a fully working telephone line which I can use to chase up Sky if it stops again. And use to chase up Southern Electric whose overhead line has got mixed up with the apple tree in my back garden. And also to chase up the gas company. They dug up part of my drive on Monday looking for a leak under the road. They found it and fixed it. But it was not the engineer’s job to fill in the holes.  So to get in and out I have to negotiate a passage between two holes and piles of earth surrounded by red boards.

They should be round to put it right ‘in two or three weeks’ the engineer said. I hope they can do it more quickly.