I have been away from the sleepy little village of Aquis-Of-The-Romans for a while, but I returned to find there had been shinanegans aplenty in my absence.

It started one morning at about 3:00am, when many residents noticed a short ring from their phones. They awoke the following morning to find the phone lines dead. Investigation revealed that this was the case for every phone line in the village!

One resident, (probably more than one) went through the lengthy and difficult procedure of reporting the fault to good old British Telecom, to be told that the fault would be fixed within 6 days. It came to light in the meantime that the fault was due to the audatious theft of the main 200-core copper phone cable that runs from the sleepy little village of Aquis-Of-The-Romans, to the exchange, several miles away. Copper is an increasingly expensive commodity these days.

True to their word, Brtish Telecom replaced the cable and restored the service just in time to meet their 6 day deadline. The village had been telecommunicationally isolated for almost a week. Two days passed with no further interuption to the service. Unfortunately, upon waking up the morning after, the residents were to discover the newly laid cable had been stolen once again, and once again the village was plunged back into a pre-Alexander Graham Bell era. One resident had been vigilant this time. Fearing the rise of crime in the previously almost crime-free community, he had set up a video camera pointing down his drive. Knowing the time the crime occurred (some people had reported the mysterious single ring in the wee small hours), he trawld through the footage, and found two cars and a van travelling together, and passing in the direction of the incident about twenty minutes before. Suspicious, especially when the very small amount of traffic that uses the lane even during the day is considered. Like a good citizen, he contacted the police to offer them the footage. "Do you have any video of the crime actually being committed?" they asked. "No", he admitted. They were not interested.

British Telecom were much quicker in replacing the cable this time. 3 days or thereabouts.

Now the story just gets plain frustrating. Another 2 days passed, and we had a repeat performance! This time, the mysterious ring rang out at about 0300, and one lady, recognising it from the previous two times, immediately phoned the police on her mobile. Again, not interested.

It would be easy to forgive the police and say, well, it's inconvenient to be without your phone, but it hardly rates as a high priority crime does it? No-one is getting beaten up or robbed at gunpoint, are they? True enough. But then, I found myself thinking back a few months to when OfClayton Snr. was living alone. A stroke had left him walking with difficulty, very unsteady, and mentally far from 100%. In order to give him some semblance of independence, we gave him a little wrist strap with a button that radioed a base station wired into his phone. If he got into difficulties, he could press the button, and an operator would (after trying to speak to him) call us out. In his latter stages in there, I was getting called out as much as every other day . . . and always for non-trivial reasons. he wasn't abusing the service, it was a genuine lifeline. I can't praise the service highly enough. And had some pikey ne'er-do-well relieved him of his phone line for an extended period, the consequences for him could have been very serious indeed. the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans has a considerable elderly population that also relies on this service. And could they phone 999? No. Frankly, it's a miracle that tragedy didn't strike.

Touch wood, the service hasn't dropped since, though if I was a scummy low-life, I'd proably think that three times was pushing my luck a little bit. I would probably wait a few weeks/months for the fuss to die down before I did it again, but it would be too easy a job for me not to have it on my to-do list. All the residents of Aquis-of-the-Romans can do is pray for the price of copper to drop considerably in the meantime.