Vodafone Italia

We had the trauma called 'Connecting the Phone' yesterday.

We had an appointment with Vodafone 'on site' (home) at 10am so we were up and having breakfast in our dressing gowns when a van pulled up at 9am. Yes, 9am. And yes, it was Vodafone.

After quickly flattening our wayward curls and throwing on the habitual trackie dacks we went out to meet them.

(Niente Inglese...)

We showed them what we believed was our telephone cable, which was a cable that attached itself to the second level of the house and then ran into a cable box and underground. We then showed them what we believed were 2 phone outlets inside the house. They huffed and walked away from these, which we think meant 'you are stupid' (the outlets turned out to be fans for the wood fires in the smoke house lounge and the kitchen). Then we found another cable box and twigged the cable in there and found that both cables that headed underground moved each other but neither appeared to be connected to anything else!

The Vodafone men seemed to be concerned that the cable might belong to the owner of the connected house but I assured him that the neighbour did not have a phone. I told them to cut the cable and redirect it into our rustico. Stuart asked me if I was sure of this. I said I was, but I wasn't. Stuart suggested I check with Renzo (neighbour) first. I said OK and got my mobile phone. I phoned Renzo. No answer. I went outside to the Vodafone men to ask them to wait before cutting the cable. I looked at 2 Vodafone men already holding a cut cable in their hands. Oops.

They busied themselves doing things that phone people do. Then they left, saying they would be back. We weren't sure if this would be in an hour, in the afternoon, this week or next month.

We waited.

Two hours later they returned. They did more things that phone people do then gave Stu a huge roll of cable and instructions in Italian. It seemed that the job of running the cable, drilling holes in the wall and connecting was much larger than their scope of work would allow. So they left and Stu stood there, with a roll of cable and a join in his hands.

A lot of work and 1 day later, we appear to be connected!

Unfortunately, our phone, which we purchased in Singapore in 2001, appears to have died so we're off today to buy a new one...