The future is orange

A terrible night of non-sleep left me feeling ropy this morning, but I managed to drag myself out of bed and accompany S to the cafe in Fabrezan. In some ways I wished I hadn't, as I suffered constant hot flushes, but I did manage to catch up on email, and post a blip. Plus the second breakfast of coffee and croissants fresh from the oven was excellent. F was coy about the origin of the croissants when we complimented her, which along with the amount of time they took to cook defrost made me suspect that M Picard was involved. No complaints, they were much better than the doughy mess we had from the boulangerie the other day, of which I managed one mouthful.

At home I managed to eat half a sandwich for lunch. Later on I decided to risk a little walk in the autumn sunshine; after all you have to find some means of diversion when you can't fritter away your time on Twitter. This turned out to be an excellent choice as, deliberately passing by the mairie in order to spy on the telecoms cabinet, I hit upon the only unbeatable method of finding out what Orange are up to. I (almost literally) stumbled over a telecoms engineer with his bum protruding from a manhole while his mate held the cover. I was a bit puzzled by his position, as it indicated they thought the problem was on the other side of the cabinet, i.e. between the cabinet and the exchange, and not where we thought it was, either in the cabinet or between the cabinet and us. “You wouldn't be investigating an Internet problem, would you?” I asked innocently once his face was visible. Of course they were and like nearly all service engineers I have met, they were friendly and helpful. Pity customer service staff don't get the same training.

Sadly the news was far from good. Yes, it was only our line that was affected. No, there was no simple fix – they'd spent hours trying to identify one. When I asked how long it might take to find a solution, they shrugged and said “A month”. “Whaaat??” 

They were subcontractors from outside the area, not employees, and they'd be submitting their report to Orange before they went home (Executive summary: “You're stuffed”). Can't see Orange wanting to dig up a 9-km cable to fix a problem for one subscriber. We await their alternative propositions for providing the service we're paying for with cynicism interest.

Even though I was exhausted and hot again by the time I got home after a walk of about 800 metres, I was very satisfied to have talked to a human on the ground without the interference of Orange; this will be our secret weapon. Meanwhile despite it now being after six, the engineer has just phoned S on his mobile to say they'll be back tomorrow to try a couple more ideas.