Ben Non Bar None

A week and a half after moving in, our phone line started working. It was supposed to be ready for when we moved in, but France Telecom had apparently neglected to do something important and highly technical that required three line checks and a visit from The Mumbling Engineer to remedy.

I’m a bit of a mumbler myself (when not ranting loudly and incoherently), or at least, I was - I hereby pledge that henceforth, I will talk clearly and with a fully open mouth at all times, especially to non-native English speakers. Even if it means they must suffer my English teeth, I will at least give them a fighting chance to understand what the mothering nuts is tumbling from my chiphole. I think Mumbling Engineer was trying to tell me that a clown with a test-tube had done something extremely unsavoury to a difficult red wine, but I’m not 100% sure I got my tenses right. It may have been a threat. He was clutching that screwdriver very tightly, now I think about it. I didn’t get a good look at his shoes.

Yesterday, our ADSL equipment (the excitingly, if inaccurately, named “Freebox” - it costs 29.99€ a month) finally arrived, after trauma with ColiPoste that is still too painful to recount - a mere 11 days after the line was activated. And guess what? After plugging it in, it appears we need to wait another 48 hours before it will actually work. I am currently using (shamefully, without their knowledge) a mystery neighbour’s unsecured wifi connection (pronounced “wee-fee” here), and my conscience can’t stick it for long. Not to mention it gets crap in the evenings when they must be using it too - selfish so-and-sos.

And it appears that the neighbours upstairs (possibly in revenge) are killing things with hammers and drills, and generally just having big-booted construction-worker fun. The near-constant drilling and hammering nicely complements the roadworks outside - Cacophany in Brain-Mash Minor. Trying to hold a thought (in any language) is proving even more difficult than usual.

But these are minor gripes. Two nights ago, we saw ex-Ride (and Animalhouse!) shoegazer-turned-space-rocker Mark Gardener at a venue just down the road from us. When, about half-way through the set, he and his new backing band (who I think are all called Jerome) dropped the folk and let fall a massive slab of instrumental wall! of! noise!, I was transported. Since leaving Brighton and the Republic of Heaven two weeks ago, I’ve had less opportunity than I’d like to experience high-amplitude noises in a combination of frequencies that interests and thrills - there is work to be done here.

I will remedy this!