Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed

Even the Prime Minister came under fire regarding the total lack of support during the aftermath of the storms

Yet again, as our cottage was plunged into darkness at 21.52 on Monday 23rd December, we were reminded of the pitiful response from the major power companies.

Our own network made almost £1bn profit in its most recent accounts, its Chief Executive was paid £1.7m and its Asian owners were paid a dividend of £135m.

Last week a Director admitted that the company were culpable by allowing too many staff to take annual leave over the Christmas break despite forecasters warning of damaging storms days before the event. A parliamentary Inquiry is now likely to be held at MPs insistance and the Directors will be asked to explain why 150,000 homes were without power for so long over Christmas.

When will we realise that all these companies are only concerned with profits and not with our welfare? Whether it's Tesco selling us cheap horse meat instead of beef, BT spending millions on Sport and nothing on infrastructure, British Gas and other companies hiking the cost of fuel so high that 30,000 died of cold last year or UK Power Networks making profits for shareholders at the expense of those of us left in the dark for far too long - we must insist that our elderly and vulnerable are taken care of BEFORE company directors or shareholders. We must ensure that our food is safe and our rights to fair treatment maintained.

We were completely without electricity for a total of 70 hours - right up until 20.30 on Boxing Day night. We were cold, dark and damp, but we had an open fire and a gas stove or two - yet being in the Cottage was miserable. 

But we had a lovely Christmas Eve at my Brothers house with my parents too and we had a wonderful Christmas day with the Grandchildren and my daughter and son in law looked after us so well.

Our power is back on, our cottage warm and light - our troubles over for now. Many, who were flooded over Christmas will not be trouble free for many months - the clearing up has only just started - my prayers go out to them, I hope you can all manage to have a Happy 2014 despite the mess and the damage and I hope that we will see an end to the cynical treatment we all receive from these companies. I leave you with a Band we discovered for the first time in 2013 - even though they've been around for 20 years or so - Show of Hands. This song has been in my head for a while now - I hope you like it and can see why.

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas Everybody

To all my followers, readers, friends and family, may I sincerely wish you a very Happy and Peaceful Christmas, a wonderful New Year and an exciting 2014.

God bless us every one.

Skyfall IV - For Your Lies Only.

Five weeks, five days and about five hours later we were reconnected by BT Open Reach and it only took them a couple of hours to sort out the entire problem start to finish. The phone works and so does the Internet - finally.

Why it took so long, why we were lied to time and time again and why they sent a lonely engineer with a single hand held tool box to fix the fault only the day before - goodness only knows for we do not.

We received texts saying the fault had been repaired on 5 or 6 separate occasions, the engineers who turned up only to stand and stare at the broken line several meters above their heads could have made up a football team - and not five-a-side either. 

Even the CEO's office staff were lied to by Open Reach and were as perplexed as we were about the protracted delay, but we have learned several lessons: Facebook is wonderful and we have many friends who put themselves out to help us. This Blog had hundreds of hits so I guess people were interested enough to read about our problems and BT, who have spent hundreds of millions  of pounds buying TV rights to various Sports, have not set up sufficient infrastructure to serve the customers they have. Misplaced priorities? We think so and we will vote with our feet very soon. 

Skyfall III - Cry Another Day

Still no relief from Storm St Jude....

The ongoing saga of BT's inability to have the common courtesy or honesty to reconnect our phone and internet after Storm St Jude damaged the line OVER 4 WEEKS AGO!

Despite having been promised that we would be visited on Wednesday 27th November - we weren't. We were then told that Open Reach would be along on the 28th to cut trees and on the 29th to reconnect - Open Reach were distinctly conspicuous by their absence.

The lady from BTwho has stayed in touch by e-mail is now joining us in the renting of clothes, the wearing of sackcloth and hair tugging that has become part of our daily lives. She has no idea what's going on.

On Monday 2nd December it will be FIVE weeks since we lost connection - we live in the country so have no 3G or, often, even any phone signal - we are therefore often un-contactable except by text. BT are still taking Direct Debits, are still beyond the reach of normal conversation and compensation looks like a dream never to be attained - as does reconnection.

Watch this space!

River Kennet

It's not often one gets a chance to fish a chalk stream to catch as many brown trout as you want. In fact, more brown trout than you want. I once read that a definition of hell would be a fishing venue where you caught fish all day long. 

A beautiful specimen........

The Kennet most certainly is not hell - it's a magical, meandering, pretty little river with miles of inlets, side streams and cascade pools to explore and we turned up to be greeted with bacon rolls and champagne lovingly prepared by our host Phil Sharnock under whose kind auspices we were invited today. 

Sparkling sunlight...

It was crisply autumnal, golden leaves glimmered in the low morning sun which reflected cleanly off the clear chalk stream water in beams of crystal light.  The trees were hanging on to the last of their russet and rufus leaves, the grass sparkled with a light frost and our breathe whisped around our mouthfuls of hot buttie as we swapped our thoughts about the day to come, spitting bread crumbs around us in a champagne spray of enthusiasm. 

We all had different plans; fly fishing for trout and grayling, feeder fishing for chub and roach, but I wanted to have a go at my preferred quarry in the winter - the pike.  I had brought along a couple of deadbait rods with some sprats, mackerel and smelt and I walked with my gear to the back of the estate, towards the old part of the river. 

Magical, meandering, pretty...

There were pike in the system but as the sun began its year end quickened journey to its highest point, they were proving hard to locate, the leaves ceased to crunch beneath my feet, beginning to whisper as the frost melted away before I saw any sign of a striking fish. But then it happened - a fish I thought to be around five pounds or so struck on the surface, scattering fry in its wake. I cast out the float fished sprat into the area and gradually drew it back towards me in short pulls, allowing the sprat to rise and sink enticingly as it moved.

Nothing. 

I cast again to the right this time thinking the fish may have turned and suddenly the float bobbed, moved sideways and began to sink away as if it had a life of its own. I leaned into the fish which certainly was not a jack and it powered away with a strong surge. It fought well for a few minutes then gave up completely until the net was seen then it started to fight again, but it was on the bank soon enough. 

My youth came back to me in a flood - Hythe Canal in 1973 - a frosty, foggy day and my first deadbait caught fish on a sprat bought that morning from the fishmongers. They're often overlooked due to their diminutive size, but my wife had bought these recently and they shimmered in the low sun as they were cast across the stream. I've had a couple more on that bait since that day in '73 but not many. It was good to get another, and a nice double too. 

I did catch some trout in the afternoon after a tasty chilli lunch and more wine, ending a wonderfully bright, successful day with a wistful moon and a sudden chill in the air as Winter reminded us of its proximity. 

Another trout....

Many thanks to Phil for the day, to Sue his wonderful wife for the chilli and to John for the lift and good company. Some men love their fishing so much that they can talk about it for hours without it seeming at all boring - John is one such enthusiast and he made the journey both ways seem short. Great company, good fishing and a bright autumn day - now that is heaven. 

Pretty brown trout...

Skyfall II - No Quantum Of Solace

Our seldom maintained generator

I write this post in a local shop which sells coffee and offers  free Internet access for its customers  – BT have, as yet, failed to reconnect our broken phone line and seem not to have any plans to do so in  the near future. As of today we have been 27 days and 6 hours without phone or internet access. We have called, e-mailed and texted on many, many occasions, we have been visited at least three times by head scratching Open Reach operatives, and told twice that we were back on even as the phone cable flapped disconnectedly in the breeze but as yet we have no hope of being reconnected.

UK Power Networks, having installed a generator in order to provide us with electricity after 85 hours in the dark and cold, then failed to maintain the machine, allowing it to run out of diesel - plunging us in the gloom for a further 5 hours the first time and 4 ½ hours the second time.

In fact, the second time, although we didn't actually run out of fuel, the maintenance Engineer was so late filling it up that in his panic, he accidentally hit the emergency cut off switch, turning off a generator that he was NOT QUALIFIED TO RESTART! 300 dark minutes later another man arrived to press the button!

We are not a third world country, we are not so remote that no one can reach us, no, we live next to a major arterial road to the South Coast – that is our problem.  We are alone in our plight – being the only property affected – that is our second problem. BT, Open Reach and all their engineers are unaccountable, uncontactable and uncaring – that is our third problem.

We shall continue to work in other peoples’ homes, coffee bars, restaurants and hot spots, we shall continue to pull out our hair and rent our clothing – but I can’t see any way out of this dilemma – at all.

Working to restore power - in the dark

Skyfall

The van driver blinked in the pre-dawn darkness  and leaned closer to his windscreen as the wild wind blew the roadside trees almost horizontal. He continued cautiously up the hill, vaguely aware of the lights behind him and the slowness of the oncoming traffic as those drivers also myopically peered through windscreens nervous of the flying debris and arboreal detritus that littered the road. On his way from Bexley to Hasting, he was seriously looking forward to his early morning tea - this days journey had been fraught with tension as the long predicted storm hit the south east in a fury of whipped branches and whirling leaves. 

His nose almost touching the windshield now, he flinched backwards sharply as he suddenly saw more movement than even this wind should produce; his foot hit the brake pedal and he hauled the van to the left as the falling tree toppled into his path, hitting the top of the windscreen, sliding down to remove the bumper and number plate. The van crunched and lurched to a halt, as the engine stalled, the vehicle swaying as the wind buffeted the right hand panels.The  Highways Agency Incident Support Unit that had been following the van pulled up behind and the three workmen quickly climbed out to check for injury.

The van driver breathed out in a shuddering sigh and clambered shakily from the cab as the Highways men joined him to survey the damage. As they went over the events in shouted conversation to carry the wind, one of the workmen started to pull the six inch thick tree trunk away from the wreckage and out of the road, another joined him while the third began to direct the traffic, but barely had they begun when a huge rending crashing sound caused them all to jump, spinning around to stare back up the hill as an eighty foot long beech bough was torn from a tree and smashed down through the surrounding smaller trees. Falling heavily onto the road and exploding like a grenade sending debris spinning into the air, the branch sliced through tree limbs, phone lines and the power line which split the power pole like a cheese cutter as it fell to earth. The four men stared in shock at the destruction just a hundred feet in front of them.  

"Bugger," I said as the kitchen was plunged into darkness and the spluttering coffee machine sputtered to a halt. I saw the end of the explosion as I looked out through the window at the aftermath not twenty yards from our cottage. My wife rushed into the kitchen and together we walked out into the wildness of the wind and noise to assess any damage. 

Unbelievably our property had been entirely missed by the destruction but only by a matter of a few feet, however all our utilities, apart from water, had been cut off by the fall. 

We didn't know it then but we would be without power, heating and hot water for almost ninety hours and without telephone and internet access for weeks. Tragically, two people were killed by falling trees, so our plight was minimal, if exceptionally annoying and frustrating. 

In our little incident, no one was hurt, though many were inconvenienced, there was no real damage to property apart from the van and we have some more firewood to season. But the utilities companies proved to be incompetent, unhelpful and uncaring. Happy to take our money and increase prices time after time, both BT and UK Power Net were very slow to show concern, answer phone calls, or provide assistance with any show of speed. 

No surprise there then.  

More firewood...