PYLONS

Last autumn Enedis erected several new tall pylons along our road.  It looks like they are poised to replace the hotch potch of old pylons that litter the roadside and fields around us.  The wires are in place but not connected up yet.  We had a planned power cut in the middle of this month when we assumed that might happen but they are still not connected to anything.

Earlier this month we had a problem with a dead live box and Orange came and fixed it straight away.  Not long afterwards one of the new wires connected to our new pylon broke off, was dangling in mid air and resting on top of our telephone cable.  We reported this fault to EDF but other than getting a reference number nothing was done about it.  All was fine until a storm that had the cables swaying around and bouncing off each other.  Lo and behold we lost our telephone service again.  We reported this to Orange who sent someone out the next day.

The telephone engineer took one look at the rogue cable and got straight on the phone to EDF.  Moments later they cut the electricity off.  Which was rather disconcerting as we were expecting five people to arrive for a Burns Night Supper that evening and I was busy baking Scotch pies.  Luckily I had in fact just taken them out of the oven as the power went off but there were other things to cook that needed electricity.  French cream is hard enough to whip up using an electric whisk so to try to do it by hand would have taken a month of Sundays!

I set about laying the table and fortunately the power was switched back on about an hour later so all was well.  The new pylons are still not connected to any live wires.

However, with only two days to go before the deadline of the end of January, we received a text from Orange to say that fibre was now available.  We had been checking every day and up to the weekend we were still in the category "working on it".  We immediately dashed up to the Orange shop in Loches to put in our order for it.  The earliest that an engineer could come and connect us up is 26th February!  Still, if we hadn't gone straight away who knows how much longer we might have had to wait as the service is now available to scores of extra outlying households.  For once we seem to be near the front of the queue!

In "other news" the weather has made a definite change for the better, frequent sunny days and temperatures in double figures.  We have been out and about enjoying the sunshine.

We have had some gorgeous sunsets.

Yvonne has settled in extremely well!!