Shed 2 (The Gazebo)

A time was booked and the HAE (Hairy-Arsed Engineer) duly arrived in his van armed with length of cable and all the requisite plugs and sockets... and a ladder. I explain where I wanted the phone socket, pointing to an upstairs room above the kitchen. He nods and says that's all do-able, then we walk down the drive to the road to seek-out the appropriate telegraph pole. He takes one look at it and does that sharp intake of breath thing...

'That's got mains power on it.' He says shaking his head, 'I need a fibreglass ladder to get up there.'... we both look at the aluminium ladder atop his van, and then back to the telegraph pole with a SEB step-down transformer fixed to it and the length of overhead power cable that runs to the eaves of my house... he does the sharp intake of breath thing again, it seems he's been practising that and needs to demonstrate this skill more than once. 

The choice between having a working business phone or a dead engineer and no power is an easy one to make, if there was a choice to be made, which there isn't. It's a Health and Safety thing, and for once a perfectly understandable one. So he buggers off to fetch a fibreglass ladder. Or so I thought.

Two days later another HAE turns-up, now armed with the correct ladder for the job. Once again I explain where the line needs to run and he looks up at my spare room and does that sharp intake of breath thing that his colleague was so good at.

'I can't get up there with a ladder,' he says, shaking his head, 'we're going to need a hoist.' I look around to see who this "we" is but there is just him and me. Remembering having seen those BT Openreach Ford Transit vans with a hoist on the roof before I ask him if that will also be able to fix the cable to a telegraph pole that has mains power on it. He nods affirmatively, climbs back into his van and, like his colleague before him, returns from whence he came.

More days pass. Eventually a BT van pulls up, but where an electric hoist should be there sits a standard aluminium ladder looking remarkably like the one that arrived on day-one. The HAE, however, is someone I've not seen before. He explains that the hoist is on its way and sure enough within a few quite long minutes a five-tonne flatbed truck equipped with a sodding great cherry-picker arrives and tries to reverse up our steep and very narrow drive. Thinking that this would be considerably easier if my car wasn't parked on the drive I flap my arms in a manic fashion to get him to stop. The driver halts the lorry, descends from the cab and waddles up the drive. So (once again) I explain where the cable needs to run. This newly arrived fourth HAE looks up at the spare room, then at HAE#3, and does that sharp intake of breath thing...

'It won't reach', he says, shaking his head but offering no further explanation. His colleague nods as if this salient fact was obvious to all. I ask if they can't just stand on the flat-roof of the bathroom and get a look from each of them as though I've just insulted both their mothers'. I am then treated to a stereophonic sharp intake of breath. [I have a City and Guilds Full-Tech Certificate in Telecoms Engineering and don't remember unison harmonic vocal inhalation being on the syllabus.]

'Not flat-roof trained,' one of them says, shaking his head. He looks to his mate who also shakes his head. 'We're going to have to fetch someone who is'. [I'm starting to think that before the week is out I would have met every engineer that BT employs in this area ... I'm also beginning to wonder just how many people and how much training is required to connect a length of 6-core cable from a pole to a wall.]  My shoulders visibly slump as they both stand there doing nothing, so to keep things moving I suggest that since the hoist is here then perhaps they can at least fix the cable to the telegraph pole while we wait the arrival of someone who is flat-roof trained. I await the sharp intake but there is none. They nod. I smile. Ten minutes later some fifty feet of cable is attached to a telegraph pole and HAE#4 climbs into his cab and buggers off, one must assume to fetch someone who has been on the appropriate H&S training course.

I brew the obligatory pot of tea while HAE #3 and I await the arrival of HAE #5 (or #1 or #2 perhaps) and so we sit under the veranda supping tea [it's actually a flat-roofed car-port but having unsuccessfully tried to park a car under it we long ago converted it to a covered patio area that some readers may remember that we call "Malcolm" for want of a more meaningful name... I should add that Malcolm's 30 feet of corrugated plastic roof is the root cause of the latest chapter in this saga becoming the fiasco that it has]. His phone rings. We both look surprised, none more so than me because all the to-ing and fro-ing over the past few days to fetch ladders and hoists has seen BT employees ferrying messages to each other in person and has not involved the use of any electronic communications equipment at all. Apparently there is no one available today who is flat-roof trained. My heart sinks as he gets up and goes to leave.

'What if,' I ask, 'you drill a hole in the wall from the inside and fix the junction-box while I scurry up onto the bathroom roof and poke the offending cable through to you to wire up? When the flat-roof guy gets here all he has to do is tidy it all up.' He thinks for a bit, and I can sense that a sharp intake of breath is imminent, so I add that I was trained as a Telecoms Technician (a small white lie but I do really have a C&G full-tech certificate in the subject, as well as a degree in Electronics and forty years experience of solving logistical and engineering type red-tape conundrums), I also point out that I have been on the roof many times to clear out the guttering and replace slipped roof slates. 'It's all perfectly safe...' I conclude, ever hopeful.

After some careful consideration he finally agrees and sets to work boring holes in my wall while I drag my laptop outside to continue working on whatever it was I was doing before they arrived. Thirty minutes later he proudly announces that it's all done, so I get up to help feed the cable through the hole to discover that "it's all done" means that it is indeed "all done." ... 

'If any one asks...' he says in hushed tones his voice trailing off and I nod in an appropriately conspiratorial way...

Once we called out a repairman to repair the gas fire. The guy arrives promptly enough and I cannot help but notice a Bandaid stuck on his forehead for it was quite a sizeable one and hard to avoid. I show him into the living room where the fire is, and kneels down in front of it and he sets to work dismantling the fire. Long story-short: as he's fighting with a large spanner on a stubborn joint, the spanner slips, he keels forward and cracks his head against the mantle piece. "Oh bother" he says (or words to that effect) "That's twice I've done that today".

Years ago we needed a plumber, normally I'd do that kind of work myself but this time I was too busy so Debs suggested we "get a man in". Not knowing any plumbers we asked a neighbour if they knew of one and he did, but added "make sure you get to come in the morning." Heeding his advice, though not sure why, we arranged for this plumber come the following day around 11 am and much to my surprise rather than having the usual white van, he arrives by bicycle with a bag of tools. As he is working away he keeps glancing at the kitchen clock, as 11:00 becomes 11:30 his work-rate seems to get quicker and as 11:30 edges towards 12:00 not only does his work speed up, his agitation and constant glancing at the clock increases too. By noon the job is finished, and being the kind of person I am, I check everything over thoroughly before paying him, and have to admit that considering the haste with which he worked, his done a bloody good job of it, however, his agitation seems to gotten even worse. "How much?" I ask pulling out my cheque book, and by now it's clear he's very jumpy and practically backing out of the door, so eager is he to get away. "Cash," he says, "Got any cash?" And I tell him I've only got a twenty. "That'll do" he replies, grabbing my money and legging it down the garden path. Later I relate all this to my neighbour and ask him what the hell was going on. "The pub opens at 12 o'clock", he explains with a grin.