The Marvelous Adventures Continue – Part 1: The Phone In The Closet and Indian Food

Big sigh.

The phone. It’s Wednesday, July 5, as I write this and it’s still not straightened out.

Last Wednesday, I called BT (British Telecom or Telephone or Toddle-heads or whatever) to get the phone hooked up. Apparently over here you have a choice regarding phone service. Let me rephrase that: whoever owns the property has a choice and the tenants have to go with it. So we were told to call BT to get service hooked up in our names. No biggie.

In fact, I called at 4 p.m. and they said by 5:30 p.m. service should be hooked up. I was highly impressed. Especially when I got a text message on my cell phone saying the service had been started. But when we picked up the phone in the kitchen, there was no tone. So we waited until noon on Thursday like they suggested the afternoon before, and then I called. They swore up and down that service was connected. I thought the phone was broken or something.

So we went out that afternoon to buy a phone cord for the laptop and a phone for the house. We can’t unplug the kitchen phone because of the way they have it installed, so we can’t take it to other plugs to check out service. Their phone wall plugs are fatter and flatter than ours, but the end of the plug that goes to the phone is the same. So we had to get a cord. On the way, we passed another super grocery store: Waitrose. This store is apparently the official grocer to the Queen. Or the Queen Mother. Or something like that. And seeing as how I have an affinity for “superstores” and “hyper marts,” we decided to pop in.

We didn’t find a phone, but we did find some Disney CDs for the kids to listen to in the car. Yippee. I need to hear Goofy singing “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain.” Off we go to my favorite store, Tesco. Tesco is too far away for me to shop at every day, but in special situations I’ll tough it out and make an exception.

We found a phone and other goodies like big huge cheap towels for the bathrooms. After we made our purchases and both big kids thoroughly chatted up the old man checking us out at the register who had the stereotypical bad English teeth, we made the journey back to AWE to get Steve.

Back at home I told Steve it was his turn to deal with BT. So he gets on the cell phone and calls. They insist that there’s service to the house; Steve takes our new phone and goes to every room and plugs in the cord in every phone jack. THE ONLY JACK THAT WORKS IS IN OUR CLOSET UPSTAIRS. How retarded. Who is responsible for this? So we tell them to disconnect this line and connect the other line they told us is coming into the house.

They can’t, but they don’t know why they can’t.

We give up for the night and break out the dinner we bought at the store the night before: 2 Indian food meals for 2. They were those “take home and warm up” kind of meal packs. It was a huge hit with everyone. We had 4 different kinds of chicken, tri-colored rice, some kind of onion balls, and naan bread. Caleb is hooked. How cool is that?

The kids are having trouble at bedtime because it’s still so light outside. If they aren’t adjusting to it quickly and are getting to sleep sooner, I’m going to have to buy some blackout cloth for their windows. I saw some just yesterday for 3.19/metre.

Join us next time for: More Phone Nonsense, School Previews, and the Beauty Shop.