Being online....

Apologies to regular readers for not doing any regular posts but I’ve been offline at home for the past few days. I was working at home on Monday morning when my laptop stopped being connected to the Internet mid email. I did the switch off/ switch on thing and that didn’t work so tried the swearing thing and that didn’t either. Tried house phone to talk to Virgin and that was dead. Tried the TV and that was off as well. And my mobile phone had lost its signal. In a couple of minutes I was back in the Stone Age!

At a loss for something to do I did what all English people do in a crisis. I put he kettle on to boil water to make tea. Waiting for it to boil and I saw a van further down the street. Some neighbour’s are having their drive resurfaced and extended. On a hunch I went out and a group of guys were gathered round one of those little digger things having a mid morning chat. In the middle of the group, and the centre of their attention was the above destroyed green ducting and severed cables. They were wondering what they were and were they important?

‘Oh! So that’s why we have no Internet, TV or phone reception is our house is it?’

One of them had the nerve to say that if we had SKY satellite instead of Virgin Cable we wouldn’t have that problem. And the one who had done the digging up complained that they were too close to the surface for his little digger. Basically I was at fault for having my cable too close to his ****** digger! Fortunately the boss guy could read my face and shut them up.

I had to drive a mile or so to pick up a signal for my mobile to phone VIRGIN. I might live on the edge of the second most important city in the UK, but without the VIRGIN booster box in the house we might as well be up a mountain in the wilds of Scotland as far as mobile reception is concerned.

The engineer came out yesterday. He’s managed to patch up the cable so we have service but there was no way he could fix the mess. That’s going to take 4 to 6 weeks when they will come and replace a long section of ducting that’s going to mean digging across several manicured lawns. Then we will need a new cable putting in as well. The drive guys have used a digger on a service strip, either in stupidity or ignorance, which they aren’t supposed to do without permission and knowing what is there. If they’d gone deeper they could have hit an electricity cable or the gas main. As they are extending the drive they need planning permission so that services can be put deeper under the drive. This they haven’t got which is illegal. If they continue to put the drive down, Virgin will just come and dig it up and they won’t be putting it back. So the neighbour’s won’t be getting their drive until the cable has been put back. They are just going to have to suck it up. And, while VIRGIN will repair wear and tear to their system, they won’t be paying for the stupid and illegal destruction of their property. Some one is going to get a massive bill. It won’t be us though.

Across the street some neighbours are having some building work done. They have kept us in the loop and told us when stuff will be happening and how long it will be going on. They used builders that some other neighbours used and we liked. The drive neighbour said nothing until the noise and the dirt started so there’s a bit of ‘what goes around comes around’ about the situation. Having had several days of inconvenience I did wave the VIRGIN engineer off with a smile on my face and a sense of satisfaction.

I have pictures for the missing days and hope to fill them in.