Well, Hubby and I are somewhat past bitter and twisted on the telephone front. When we first moved here (more info to follow) we were perplexed to notice that every house in the village (about ten in total) had the same address - well, no address really - no house name, no road name, no number, just the name of the village. Not unbelievable when we’re all dotted around over several acres, down windy tracks and, in our case, smack bang in the middle of a bloody great field. We should have realised that this would bode evil when it came to explaining to Eircom (and anyone else that needs to find us) where the bloody hell we are. The postman, a rather chirpy and terribly friendly chap called Kieron, who appears in his green van every morning with the music blaring at ear-splitting levels, explained when he introduced himself that he knew everyone in the village anyway, so there was no need for anyone to have a different postal address. How quaint, we thought, how terribly sweet and villagey. How wrong we were.
Next came the call to Eircom. Hubby was asked our address. ‘No house name?’ came the inevitable question from the nice lady. ‘Er no’, replied Hubby patiently, further digging himself a big hole by explaining helpfully that: ‘Kieron says we don’t need one because he knows everyone so there’s no point’. Well, from that moment it because patently obvious that Kieron was no bloody help when it came to getting a telephone line. After tracking down the name of the previous occupant to see if this would help, we were told that there were two families by that name already in the village, but were given a number that could possibly be ours (or possibly not, but if someone else complained that their phone had gone dead at least that would narrow it down) and told it would be connected within two hours. Dream on. Two weeks came and went, along with several hundred Euro of talk time and some very frustrating conversations. No, they had no record of our previous call, and no, the number we were given by the invisible Eircom operator doesn’t exist. You’d better have an engineer…ten working days then? Cue blood curdling frustrated yelling from Hubby and severe blog withdrawal symptoms from me. Eventually though, the lovely Philip came from Eircom. He was very sweet and knowledgeable, and lo and behold a phone line was connected. How we cheered! How we sang! Quick, fire up the internet! Cue sound of needle being scratched against record. The modem was strangely silent. Ah well, at least we could use our phone to ring Eircom now. ‘Ah’, explained another nice Eircom operator, you’ll be after needing to be connected to the internet now. Can you have Broadband? Er, I don’t know. Tell you what, I’ll look into it and give you a ring next week. Connection? Ooh, shouldn’t be more than ten working days…’