Smashing!

As I start to write this, I am offline and have no way of connecting to the internet. The reasons for which, will become clear later. There is my mobile which would cost a fortune and would take forever, should that be “4eVa”? I do not do text speak finding it infuriating in the context of a web page where users have a perfectly good keyboard with all the letters they need. I also find it incredibly ageing (one of those words incidentally, that looks wrong when written but you try taking out the E and it looks even worse) I will use abbreviations to some extent in text messages but not to the point of being unintelligible to all but a sixteen year old.


The house had several blown double glazed units so Katy arranged for Mc****** Glazing to come to replace them. When I arrived home just after twelve, they were at their lunch, having taken off the outside glazing beads in preparation for the removal of the misted up units once I gave them access. A little while later, one of them knocked on the door and I let him in. I warned him of the presence of Evie (She’s fine by the way. Her highlight of today was to go outside, eat some grass, come back in, puke up the grass in two strategically chosen piles at the doorway to the living room, then lay a smelly dump in her litter tray) to which he assured me that he would keep the doors closed.


While they were banging away upstairs, brother George phoned. He was needing advice as to how to break into a Mercedes S Class. I have no idea why I should know about these things. The only speciality I had was that of the owner of said Merc, to lock one’s keys inside (see last weeks blog). As we spoke, I heard a crash of breaking glass, followed by an expletive. When I walked through the hall, I saw the man struggling down the stairs with a glazing unit looking rather sparsely glazed. I acknowledged him and he grunted a reply. From the tone of the grunt, I determined that this must be one of the old ones. There followed another half an hour or so, more banging. After which, the ladders were put back on their van and they declared they were finished. I climbed the stairs and looked at the new glazing in the windows of the front bedroom. There was a little bit of putty round the edges of the glass but nothing major. They left the invoice and were on their way.


A little later, I spotted a piece of broken glass on the front doorstep. Upon bending down to pick this up, I noticed another piece and another, and another. In fact the driveway was strewn with little pieces of glass and a glazing nail which glinted at me almost saying “I’m going to have your tyre”. once I retrieved the debris outside, I thought I had better check to make sure nothing had been trailed through the house. Sure enough, once I started to look there were shards all the way up the stairs. Evie had followed me up so she was scooped up and locked in the living room for her own safety. I soon found where the unit had been dropped, a dent in one of the wooden stair treads, consistent with having been struck by the corner of a window unit. The area around the dent was strewn with fine glass dust and slivers. I cannot prove that this was the point of impact but, given that I recently hand sanded and varnished the stairs, I was unaware of such a dent previously. I, of course knew about the dent left by the decorators but that was in a different place altogether and another story told in the blog previously. I am considering naming each stair after a contractor, complete with a brass plaque bearing their name, date and level of incompetence.


While they had been working upstairs, I noticed that my internet connection had been lost and, upon trying the phone handset, found there to be no dialling tone. I put this down to the proximity of the BT master socket to the window area. There are several plugs into the socket and I imagined that the fitters had disconnected the plugs to make working easier. Again, it was only once they had left that I discovered that the plugs had not been disconnected but that the main line into the property had been severed where it connects to the master socket. I resolved to reconnect the wires. Unfortunately, I was not sure which wire should connect to which terminal. “I know” I thought, “I’ll call BT and ask them which coloured wire goes where, then I’ll whip out my screwdriver and wire strippers and simply reconnect it”. Wire strippers are an important accessory when connecting a BT line as the ‘stick between front teeth to strip off insulation’ method can be rather tricky. In fact, it can be rather painful as there is 50 Volts of direct current surging through a phone line and through me on a previous occasion at the flat.


I had to use the mobile to call BT of course. A free 0800 number, not free if using a mobile. In fact, it costs me more to dial a free phone number than it does to call an 01.… or 02... number. After the usual options, including the “if you want to report a fault with your phoneline, you can do it on our website” one which I love. I was told that they were experiencing high call volumes, (what a surprise that a call centre should actually have people call them!) and that, if I wanted, I could opt for them to call me back. I gave this a go. I then spent the next half an hour walking around with my mobile in the air to ensure a signal, inside the house tends to be a bit sporadic signal wise. A got the call and was asked to describe the fault. I said that I knew the fault and told the woman on the phone that the wires were cut. “So is the phone line not working?” she asked. “Of course not, the wires aren’t connected” I replied. “But if you just tell me which coloured wires go where, I will fix it. “Oh I cannot allow you to do it yourself, if you cause damage to our network then you will be charged. I will need to send out an engineer” I thought that I was going to be given an appointment a week on Tuesday or something but, to my surprise, I was offered Friday morning. I tentatively asked if it could be in the afternoon once I returned from work and she agreed. “If it proves to be anything other than wear or tear” she continued “ you will be charged for the call out. It will be £60, followed by £70 for every subsequent hour, or part thereof, necessary to remedy the fault” I replied, “How do you define wear and tear?” “The engineer will decide that” she told me. All I had wanted was to find out which wire went where. I could have searched the internet, but of course I couldn’t. I could have waited until George or Ashley were home and ask them to dismantle their socket but I had made the call now and was terrified that the fitters may have caused damage to the line had the bare wires touched. I was resigned to, not only having to be home by one the next day and stay in until the engineer turned up. But also the real possibility of a hefty bill.

FRIDAY:
The engineer has left now. His words upon being introduced to the bare wires were, "the quicker I get this done, the less it'll cost you" so I imagine a bill will be forthcoming.
The letter of complaint to Mc****** glazing has been written and, as soon as I know how much BT has charged for their five minute job. We shall be sending them a cheque for less than the invoice total to represents our costs, time and inconvenience caused by the actions listed above.
All I need to do now is upload this latest tale of good luck.