102. Cables (1/3)

 I am sitting in bed reading the newspaper. My husband, who is on holiday, is working (don't ask) and is at the desk with his computer and on the phone. The phone rings downstairs. Then the dog barks. Then someone knocks on the door. I ignore everything and everyone; reading about the dreadful state our world is in can be quite fascinating. 

One of our offsprings answers the phone then passes it on to her brother. Her brother then mutters something inaudible to me and then calls his parents.

'Mum! Dad! Someone's on the phone for you!'

I do not move my head, just my eyes in the direction of my husband. He gets up from the desk and crosses the room to go downstairs. All the while, speaking into the phone:

'Excuse-me Alasdair, can I call you right back? I've got a call on the house phone.' He does not add 'and nor my kids, nor my wife is bothering.' 

I can vaguely hear my husband saying 'Yes', 'Yes, right' and 'OK' but nothing more. I carry on with the depression-inducing reading material. I am thinking I should write more serious stuff, more depressing stories as I am clearly not in phase with the current trend. 

'Please, can you take that call? It is about getting 'la fibre'...'

So I head downstairs, certain I will be the one to sort the problem out. 

I thought 'la fibre' had been sorted weeks ago! I vaguely remember signing a paper and not filing it ... I remember guys up ladders drilling into the walls of the houses in our street ... or was that the gas people? No, definitely not the gas people. The gas people drilled at the bottom of the house and dug the street. I know because there is a fence up to allow the cobble stones and the cement to set. It has been there for over three months now. (It's not dry yet, they told me when I enquired. You see, it keeps on raining.) But this matter needs my attention so I quit reading about the world out there and get down to our street level.

'Yes? What can I do for you?' 

The poor man at the other end of the line starts by wanting to check he is at the right address. I am now the fourth person he speaks to in this household and he still hasn't got his message through. So by now he probably thinks he's got the wrong number and is through to the dope-smoking MMOG-playing Domino-Pizza-ordering neighbours.

'Yes! That's the correct number. And yes, that's us living here and that is our number.' 

I soften up because he has one of these foreign far away accents ... And also because I can picture him, conscientiously reading from a thick folder in a cubicle in a room full of people all muttering in the phone, all of them thousands of miles away from me. I am about to give him the address of my blog to cheer him up a bit ... 

'It is about the fibre optic cable Madam ...'

'Ooh! That sounds fancy! Is this for real?'

Silence.

'Only joking! Sorry. What about the 'fibre optic cable'?'

He goes on reading his folder. I am getting bored so I interrupt him.

'No, sorry, I am not interested. Thank you. Our Internet connexion is fine.'

My son speaks from the corner of the room.

'Mum!!!! What are you doing? We need the fibre! This Internet connexion of ours rubbish.'

I give him the mother look. He goes quiet. But the man at the other end of the line is shocked. He tells me:

'Really? ... It's good?'

'Yes, very good. Excellent!'

'No! Mum! What are you doing! It's rubbish!' My son is interrupting again.

'And it is the same price.'

Yeah. Right. Sure it is. I can picture him again reading from his folder. 'You will get it for 39.99 for the first year and ...' but I am not listening. Something is going on in our street. Our neighbour is behaving strangely (not the dope/MMOG/Domino one). He is walking up and down the street, on and off the pavement carrying traffic cones (Stolen? Bought on Amazon? This being a reference to a still unpublished post). He gets into his car, moves it down a few parking spaces then back up, places the traffic cones again.

'OK. What do I have to do to get this wonderful offer?' I ask absent-mindedly, yet meaningfully staring at my son and pointing frantically at the window to get my son to investigate. But sadly my son only cares about the optic whatever fibre.

The neighbour is now talking to a young man and apparently directing him to place a huge ladder against our wall. He is going to climb up it, up to the - open - windows of my son's bedroom! I gesture but still my son insists I give an audible clear YES to the fibre guy.

'Yes, yes, OK, that's fine but no I cannot listen to you reading the contract out to me right now. (Honestly! Do people really do this?) Sorry, there is someone at the door. I have to go and attend to this ... this ... strange occurence.'

The man with the exotic accent takes his eyes off his folder for a moment as he sense the urgency in my voice.

'OK, Madam, I will call at 5.' And he dares to add. 'When you are a little more settled.'

The cheek of him! But outside the neighbour is directing a stranger to climb up to one of my windows! So I just say:

'Thank you! Speak to you at 5. Bye!'

To be continued ...