The point of the post originally was that - At Last, After 11 weeks in total the slate roof is finished. It looks beautiful. I now know why we chose to go down the slate roof route. It complements the woodwork and windows perfectly.
I was pretty excited about that at the time! But then we had the internet issues. So what happened?
Well, firstly our phone line was rigged up by the electrician so we had phone and internet in the caravan/ office. This worked fine as Neil had tensioned the line across from the pole by tying it to the scaffold. All was well while we had scaffold! Then the scaffolders (at last) came to remove the final bits of scaffold. They removed everything including untying the phone wire and letting it hang loose. What they hadn't realised is that it hung loose over the road. So one night the internet worked and the following morning it didn't. All we can assume is that a vehicle had hit the line overnight and broken it. Luckily it didn't cause any more harm than breaking the line.
To get it fixed took quite a while! The first BT engineer came out pretty quickly -the same day the 'fault' was reported in fact. When he realised what had happened he took great joy in telling me the implications of 'us' tampering with phone lines and the risks we caused by letting the line hang across the road. He also told me that our supply pole was 'too short' as it didn't reach the required 5.9 meters! His words to me were "You've opened up a can of worms here!"
I thought to myself how long is this going to take and who is going to pay for it?
What the engineer did that was useful though was to tell me what i needed to ask for and then he closed the job so according to BT systems the fault was fixed - which effectively meant we weren't liable for the line breaking at that time.
I then called BT up and after speaking to 9 people and taking 2 hours I got through to some one who understood what a 'Line Plant Rearrangement' actually was. (It simply meant that our line needed to fixed to a new pole, or buried under ground and then re affixed to the house - simple eh?).
The Surveyor was booked to come out to check what we needed for the following day. He arrived and surveyed the job and told Claire it was too late in the day to complete it and also that he needed two men to do it. He said they'd be back tomorrow.
The next engineer arrived the following day -Christmas Eve - late in the afternoon and alone. He checked the job and told me.... 'Sorry mate, i can't do the job alone and also it's too late in the day. You'll have to ring BT to reschedule it!!'
So, after three visits we still weren't fixed. I called BT and eventually found some one who got a commitment to do it by 31st December.
Eventually we had two guys turn up on 30th December, early in the day, to fix it. They simply wired us up to the next pole in the street and connected the line to the opposite end of the house, so the wire was higher across the road. It took them a couple of hours to complete but at last we were back online.
It's funny how being without internet causes so much frustration. We realised how much we rely on it for everything we do - even listening to music now meant we had to find CDs!
So, it's now the 4th January and we are just getting back on top of this blog stuff. Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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