Incommunicado
Grandad May 19th, 2009
I hate telephones.
When I am talking to someone, I like to be able to look them in the eye and, if necessary, to be within thumping distance.
They are a necessary evil though, especially if you have Herself to contend with.
She likes the phone, and will happily spend hours yakking away to her pals, so I have to have one to keep her happy.
It does have other uses though, and is quite handy if I want to blast someone because my Interweb is disconnected or if I want to order five tons of fresh manure to be delivered outside someone’s gate.
Herself also insisted that I get in one of those satellite dish things so she can watch utter shite on television. For reasons best known to God and some technician in Outer Mongolia, the satellite box has to be connected to a telephone line. I now have a few extra satellite boxes, which I acquired off Spanner, and they all have to be connected.
There isn’t much point in having all my satellite boxes in one place, so I have one in the front room, one in the back room, one in each bedroom and one in the shed. This means that I have to have a lot of telephone wires running all over the place. Not wanting to bother those nice people in Eircom, I ran all the wires myself. It’s a very simple job, and all has been running smoothly for quite a while; up to a couple of days ago, that is.
Herself started complaining that she couldn’t gossip to her pals because there was a crackling noise on the phone. I checked it, and there was. I didn’t bother fixing it though, as it was pissing rain outside and I didn’t feel like getting wet. I told her to suffer it, and left it at that. But then our K8 phoned from Thailand. I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. It sounded like she was thousands of miles away, for fuck’s sake. I decided something had to be done.
Yesterday, I rewired the place. I put more sticky tape on the places where I had twisted the wires together, and I removed one of the junction boxes from the bottom of the pond. I don’t know how that got there.
When I had finished, I tested the lines. Nothing. There was a quiet hiss, but nothing else, so I disconnected. Immediately, the phone rang. There was no one there, just another hiss. I tried phoning myself using my mobile. The mobile told me it was ringing, but the telephone remained mute. Herself is not pleased.
In the end, I phoned Eircom, using my mobile and told them some wanker has been messing with my phone, and that it’s not working. I’m not having some snotty trainee telling me off, and criticising my work.
I’m still waiting for the trainee. Life is nice and quiet. I haven’t had a cold call since.
I would call up and cancel the trainee, but I hate my mobile too.
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