The news from home is a lot better than it was, and rewrites the message displayed on the screen above.
On Monday, the day we had been promised that elusive phone line (the first such promise having evaporated into nothing), Mike from the BT chairman's office informed us that the order had "failed" again.
He could not say why this was the case, but undertook to find out. I advised him to be prepared for a verbal onslaught when Mme Salut called, and this was duly delivered. I followed up with an embittered e-mail, no less forthright though mitigated by a stiffer upper lip than anyone with a Latin temperament will ever possess.
I reminded Mike that our experience of BT service had been downhill all the way since my very first call to place the order on September 30, when I was told by an exceedingly confident BT representative: "I have some good news for you - you'll be connected with three days and online two days after that."
Which approach did the trick may never be known. The trick, however, was somehow done and while I am no longer anywhere nearby to take advantage of it, we now have a home phone number again. The connection came just under two weeks later than expected, which is just under two weeks longer than a comparable exercise took in France, though Salut! readers have come up with one or two anecdotes that make my waiting time seem positively fast track.
Coincidentally, I picked up the heartening word from Britain about our new line minutes after collecting my new Blackberry in Abu Dhabi. Please do not even dream of calculating what we have been spending on occasional calls to and from Britain on French mobiles. Also today, a grateful e-mail arrived from Paris announcing the safe receipt of the prize, much delayed by the British postal strike, won by Dumdad in my recent Piers Morgan competition.
Earlier in this saga, I said I would declare Mike my hero once he had twisted his colleagues' arms and got them to honour their stated willingness to accept our custom.
And so I will, though on a provisional basis only pending further belated tidings from west London that there is also an internet connection.
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