A couple of days ago our home telephone line went dead. We still had internet access, but when we picked up the phone there was no dialing tone, nothing. After a few days I rang Sky and navigated my way through the maze of automated menus. I must admit I was impressed with just how many options they felt it necessary for me to spend my limited life listening to. In fact so prolonged was the task of menu navigating that by the end of it all, the automated female voice was actually showing signs of irritation. Brilliant touch Sky – it actually made me smile to think that the computer was even more fed up having to spout out the tedious list of choices than I was having to listen to it.
Finally I got to speak to a human being, but as it transpired, even after going through the above, she was not the right person and had to transfer me to another helper called Linda. Linda took my details and then as I was at work and not at home by the faulty phone, arranged to ring me back later that evening, which she duly did.
We went through all the tests, unplugged and checked all the phones, tried the test socket, before Linda decided our line was fine and that it was our 'box on the wall' that was faulty. Trying to hide my skepticism I listened to my options. I could pay for Sky to enlist BT to come and look at it, but if it was my 'box on the wall' it would cost me a £99 call out fee, plus an hourly fee. The other option was to contact a local independent. I contacted my Dad.
About 15 minutes my Dad has the main box in bits and diagnoses there to be no fault with it, but that it is the line that is dead, it showed no vaults or anything. So planning to contact Sky in the morning, we went to bed... and this is where it gets a little weird.
In the middle of the night, in that strange place in between sleep and the real world I thought I heard a tinny voice. I couldn't understand what it said, but it seemed to be coming from the phone on the bedside table. So I picked it up, but there was nothing, still dead. As you can imagine, Claire was a little intrigued at my actions. Still we drifted back into that happy place of slumber. As I slept, the whole phone thing must have been playing on my mind as I dreamt that now the phone was fixed.
A little while later when the alarm burst the bubble of sleep, I lay in bed semiconscious – all the time thinking the phone is working, the phone is fixed. When I finally mustered the energy to reach out and pick up the receiver you can imagine my surprise at hearing the reassuring buzz of the dialing tone. How weird was that?
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