Oops! What happened to the internet?

I thought I’d share this story with a few of you. When I’m not doing anything more useful, I write for fun. Something interesting happened so I thought I would share it. This is not intended to be a piece of polished prose. It’s being written pretty much on the fly, without much revision. I’m sending it by several different methods (some eMail, some;  other  internet, one by “snail mail”). This is the story of what happened on Thursday (30^th August 2012). Enjoy!

Thursday 30^th August

K is a peaceful place. Not that much happens here. We have drunkenness at the weekends and we have had incidents of arson, but compared to London, this is a haven of tranquillity. The people of K would probably regard Feltham as being like a suburb of Beirut (or these days, Aleppo). They would be wrong to think that, but that the grass is almost always greener or scorched somewhere else, never “similar but just a little different”.

If K is tranquil, then F Road is quiter still and the little hamlet where I live, up beyond the cemetery (how appropriate) is completely still. The gentle stream, becomes sluggish. The backwater is like a mill pond and the water reflects the sky. Nothing ever happens, but all that can change quite suddenly! I know you’ve all been here, so it will help of you if you can picture my house and the stretch of road between the house and the cemetery.

On Thursday afternoon I was, as they say “going about my business”.  I’d eaten a sandwich for lunch, and  prepared dinner for the troops so they could eat when they got in from school. A home-made cottage pie was sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to be popped into the oven. Dinner could be ready in less than half-an-hour. It was time to get on with some business related chores upstairs.

Since any of you have been here I have furnished “Bedroom Number Six” as an office. You should be jealous. Even I am jealous! You wouldn’t call it palatial, but it is reasonably tidy (in a male kind of way), the books I want are arranged in an orderly fashion on shelves, I have a desk (home-made), a chair to sit on when I’m typing and an easy chair to sit in and ponder. It’s bliss!

The chores for Thursday afternoon were: do a little job hunting, clear the job-hunting-related-spam and do some “writing”. I’ve been trying to do the Graham Greene thing of having a quota of words to write per day (of course, what you are reading is part of today’s quota). Most of it is rubbish. I’ve been experimenting with different subjects and different writing styles. This is another experiment. Before I settled down to do the writing, I was going to check something on the internet and check my mail. The internet wasn’t working. Oh expletive!

 The internet at my place is pretty reliable. The last time it failed for more than a few minutes was a couple of winters ago when the outside temperature plummeted to an indicated -12 deg C. At those temperatures lots of things stopped working, including the water mains.

The message on the browser said that “my router was unable to connect to the exchange”. Actually, one of the most sensible messages I have read on a computer.  I went downstairs to reset the router – no improvement. The obvious next thing to do is ring up Eircom (the Irish equivalent of BT) and tell them there is a fault with my internet service. I looked up the number and picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. The internet and the phone share the same wires, so absence of dial-tone would explain why the internet isn’t working. For no particular reason, I decided that before I phoned Eircom with the mobile, I would take a look outside, after all, if I could see something obviously wrong, like a wire down, I could tell Eircom and that would speed up the repairs.

I went out to the front gate wearing my carpet slippers. A quick look up and down the road told me that something was going on, because about 70 yards towards K a group of my neighbours was milling about in the road. I waved to them and then I went inside to change into my boots and then joined them to find out exactly what was going on.  

The first thing I noticed was that there were a couple of cars parked in the entrance to the Council yard and the next thing I noticed was that there was a car “parked” on the grass in front of the COPE building. I didn’t take much deduction to work out that there had been a car accident. The strange thing was that nobody seemed to be injured.

The first person I spoke to was my neighbour Lilly. I asked her if there was anyone injured (all those years in the Scouts has had some effect). She said that everyone was alright but that “they” had left on foot! “They” were the driver and passenger of the car. The crashed car was probably stolen. I then saw that Dennie (Lilly’s husband) was pulling some wires out of the road. Not only had “they” crashed the car, but they had demolished a telegraph pole in the process! The car crash was the cause of my internet failure, and I had arrived on the scene probably not more than 15 minutes after the actual incident. I asked around and they said that the criminals had escaped, the Garda had been called, but that nobody had got round to calling Eircom. That seemed fair enough, so while they waited at the scene of the crime, I said I would make it my job to contact Eircom.

I went back inside and phoned Eircom on my mobile (I’d left the number inside). I got through to the fault reporting service immediately. It was a machine. There were times that I felt like screaming, but I went through with the procedure: Machine “I’m going to run a line test on your line”, Me (mentally) “and you’re going to find it’s broken” etc. I knew exactly where the line-fault was and could tell them to within a few yards exactly where to find it. In fact, I could have given them a grid reference which would have go them to within 70 yards of the fault. Still, procedures are procedures, especially if you’re a recording, and it was undoubtedly the quickest way of getting the message into Eircom. Irritated but satisfied that I had done my bit I went back outside to find out if anything interesting had happened in the meanwhile. 

Back outside, K’s finest had arrived in force. There were two police cars, one pulled up at the side of the road, and the other pulled up in the road while they had a quick conference. The car in the road, which was facing away from K, set off, blue light flashing, but without any siren. The man-hunt was on! After exchanging a few more words with the neighbours, I went back indoors. I had things to do, providing they didn’t involve the internet! Shortly after this, N and the girls arrived from school. By that time, the crowd (crowd?) had dispersed, and there was only a single Garda, with an unmarked car parked in the access to the council yard, so they didn’t even register that something significant had happened until I told them.

After dinner, I went back outside to see if anything significant had happened. I guess by this time it would be a little after 5 o’clock. The Garda was still there, taking photographs and measuring things and now there were two women who hadn’t been there before. I wandered over, surveyed the scene and asked if they were involved. The younger woman said that it was her husband’s car (so it was stolen). I told her that if she needed anything she (and her companion) were welcome to come along to my house. They said thanks, but no thanks. Then the Garda asked me if I was a witness. I explained that I wasn’t really. All I could tell him was what he could gather from his own observations; the rest would be me repeating what other people had told me. He seemed satisfied with that and made note in his notebook. I expect he was relieved that he didn’t have to take another witness statement.

As I was walking back home, I met another neighbour. She had come along with her children to view the entertainment and they were all looking at the wreck. We were constantly telling the children to pay attention to the road. Mobile phone cameras have the unfortunate side-effect of making people, especially children, feel remote from their surroundings. They were quite likely to wander into the road while in search of a better shot. None of us wanted to add a secondary accident to the one that we had already! As we talked, it was clear that one thing which had us all a bit puzzled was how the car had got to where it was. It was the right way up and facing in the right direction, but the lawn on which it was standing was between two and three feet higher than the road, and there was no great damage to the surrounding retaining wall. Had it flow there? Even now I don’t know the answer, though I do have a possible, partial explanation but more of that later.

Over the course of the evening I popped out from time to time to see what was happening. First the Eircom engineer turned up. He seemed to spend quite a while on his mobile phone. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I would guess. When I went and looked later on, he had tied some marker tape on various things to flag the work-site for the follow-up crew. This was a good idea. Large as it is, a horizontal telegraph pole lying along the ditch at the side of the road is easy to miss.

The next person to turn up was the man with the wrecking truck. He too spent a while on the phone, probably explaining to someone back at base:  the car was a write-off, and that he didn’t know how he was going to get the wreck from where it was without doing damage to the COPE’s property. I didn’t know either. He had one of those flat-bed trucks where the flat back can tilt and extend down to the road. Great for picking something up from ground level, but I would have thought it would be hopeless for something “up there”. I thought that he would have to abandon the attempt until he got a crane. I was wrong. I came out a little later and he had got the wreck down onto the road and was in the process of winching it onto the truck. He didn’t cause any additional damage either. Good job!

It was about this time that I finally got round to checking my eMail. I had an enquiry from an agent! That’s the first enquiry I’ve had in ages, and I wasn’t able to reply. Neither I nor any of my immediate neighbours had any internet or phone, and of course the agent hadn’t given me a phone number anyway (all you have to do is reply to the eMail!). Disgusted, I decided that beer was the only solution. I went to the pub.

In the pub, I bumped into B, one of my neighbours who I hadn’t seen so far that day. B had been drinking, he has a thick North Cork accent and I’m deaf. I like B but sometimes we have problems communicating. I asked him if he knew about the incident up at home. He said that he did, and that what’s more, those responsible had been caught. He mentioned the name of a notorious local family of ne’er-do-wells. Someone else came over and B and I had to provide details of the bits of the story which we knew.

Friday 31st August

I got up a bit late (but still before 8) and more in hope than expectation, texted someone I know down in town and asked if I could borrow his internet connection for a few minutes. He was amenable to this, so I set off to do the daily chores of shopping and stuff early and at the same time send a message to employment agency. As I set off for town, the men from Eircom had already arrived. They had a truck with a pile of telegraph poles on the back and a huge auger thing attached to the end of a hydraulic jib.

My acquaintance A runs a small computer maintenance business out of a shed in his parents garden (yes, really). He’s a one man business and he gives really good service. When I explained what I wanted he said that was completely ok. When I explained that the car which did the damage had been stolen, he swore loudly. I think maybe he has had some trouble with car-thieves in He hooked me up to his network and did something else while I typed my note.

Just as I finished my sending my note and collecting the stuff waiting in my inbox, another customer came in carrying a laptop which needed something done to it. The inside of A’s office is a real Alladin’s cave, benches on all three sides with servers under the counter and around the back and it gets a bit “friendly” with three people in there. We all shared the time of day and complaints about the problems of the world, and I went on my way.

Back at home, the men from Eircom were working away. I really can find no fault with them. I don’t say that they were working hard, but they were working steadily. Different people came and went. First there were the pole erecting crew, then there were the people who strung the wires, and finally there was the poor soul (or maybe there were two of them) who was left behind to do the myriad of connections.  I saw no sign of anyone loafing around supping tea. Instead, throughout the day, every time I could be bothered to look, there was something going on. It is quite a shock to discover how much damage taking out just one telegraph pole does. First they had to dig a hole with the auger and erect a new pole. Then they had to string the wires. And finally, as I said there were all the connections to make. My phone made its first chirrup a little before 4 o’clock. Then the phone was working. I know because I checked incoming and outgoing calls with my mobile. Finally the internet connected up. It seemed to be unstable for half-an- hour and it has been normal since. People (including me) tend to criticise the service they get from telecoms companies but this time I can’t find anything to criticise, except perhaps the impersonal nature of the fault reporting process. From incident to fix was barely over 24 hours, and this was a completely random occurrence. The only simplifying factor was that “the fault” was about as simple (if dramatic) as they come.

And when I finally got round to checking my eMail, I found that; yes, you’ve guessed it, the employment agency had sent me an eMail and hadn’t phoned me. That’s after me telling them “I have no landline and I have no internet because some eejit has demolished the telegraph pole which serves me and my neighbours.”  Some people! I’ve sent them a CV, so we’ll see if anything comes of it.     

Saturday 1^st September

There is a rather odd addendum to the factual part of the story. As usual, we went to the “vigil” mass on Saturday evening. During the service the priest made an apology. He said he was sorry if there were any notices missing from the weekly news sheet. The church has a box where people can deposit slips of paper requesting things that they want included in the news sheet. That box had been stolen on Thursday! As the priest said, presumably whoever had taken it had it had thought that there might be money in it. The box and some slips had been found in the cemetery adjoining the church on Friday but this was after the news sheets had been printed and of course the priest could have no idea if any slips were missing.

As N pointed out our way out of the car park on the way home; was it a coincidence that the theft had occurred on the same day, and close to the time that the car was stolen? It is only a short distance, over a pedestrian footbridge from the church to the place where the car was taken from. It is certainly tempting to think that there might be some connection.

Conclusions

The whole affair made me pause for thought. Here are my conclusions:

I went out and paced out the distances involved with the accident (I’ll give the measurements in Imperial, but they were taken by paces, so just substitute metres for yards if you prefer):

• ·         The distance from my house that the car finally finished up is 70 yards.
• ·         I can identify the point where the car first touched the verge from a gouge mark.
• ·         The distance from the gouge mark to the telegraph pole is 15 yards.
• ·         The telegraph pole was snapped off, close to ground level.
• ·         The car finished up on a lawn which is raised about the road level by 2 to 3 feet and surrounded by a dry stone retaining wall.
• ·         The distance from the telegraph pole to where the car finished up is 40 yards.
• ·         The car involved was a Volkswagen Passat.

My conclusions:

• ·         The car must have been travelling at a fair speed.
• ·         I’m not entirely sure how it got up the vertical 2 to 3 feet, but my thoughts are; the driver lost control, careered along the verge, hit the pole which snapped off. As the pole was falling, the car slid up the pole, as if it was a ramp, and flew the last few yards before landing pretty much pancake style on the lawn. I’m not entirely satisfied with the explanation, but it explains most of the facts.
• ·         If anyone had been walking on the road, or even on the lawn, then we would have had a real calamity on our hands.
• ·         Volkswagen Passats are tough. It may have been written off but those inside were in a sufficiently good state that they were able to run away. They do say: “any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!”
• ·         The Garda Siochanna can run a man-hunt and get their man. They did have some advantages, like the fugitives were on foot and in a state of shock, but the Garda got their men.
• ·         Eircom can fix major damage quickly and efficiently.
• ·         Employment agencies don’t read what you send them. 

On an even lighter note…

As it sometimes says at the start of a movie: “this is based (loosely) on real events which really, REALLY took place.”

Paddy and Mick were short of cash so Paddy suggested that they help themselves to the poor-box at the Church. Mick thought there wouldn’t be much in it (“the people round here are too stingy”), but it might get them a couple of pints.

Paddy went into the Church while Mick kept watch. A few minutes later Paddy came out with the box stuffed under his coat. They went into the graveyard to break it open. Mick got out the screw-driver he kept in his pocket and wrenched off the poxy little padlock in a trice. They looked once, they looked twice, there was nothing inside but little bits of notepaper. Mick looked at the outside of the box again. “You eejit!” he said. “You’re after taking the wrong fecking box!”.

Just then, Paddy saw, or thought he saw, some movement. In an instant he had vaulted the fence and was off like a hare. Mick dropped the box and was after him, still clutching the screwdriver in his hand.

They ran over the iron footbridge, straight through the park and past the Doctor’s surgery. When they got to the main road Paddy paused for a moment to let Mick catch up. They ran across the road, and then left up F Road. There were always cars parked there, outside the Gym.

In a trice, Mick had spotted a likely car. He tried the handle. He was in luck. A few seconds later, they were inside and Mick was fiddling under the dashboard. They were off.

Off up the road they sped. It’s a winding road, but Mick put his foot down. The police weren’t going to get him. Oh, no.  All the time Paddy kept looking out the back window and yelling at Mick to go faster.

Suddenly the car touched the kerb, and then, in slow-motion, it was in the air, flying like something out of “The Dukes of Hazzard”. Bang! It hit the deck. The airbags went off. Everything was pandemonium. Mick pulled himself together he was out of the car and Paddy was after him. They just kept running .

When he glanced back, Mick could see the locals gathering round the car. Some of them had pitchforks, some of them had blazing torches.

Mick and Paddy kept on running, and then they heard the sound of the bloodhounds…