Surely not

I hardly dare believe it, but this sign appeared on the mountain road late on Friday evening:

that'll be fun for all the locals

Close inspection of the planning notice sheets attached to the Hafod Estate signpost suggest that over the course of the six weeks, BT are going to replace 29 poles and renew the cable. I can only hope that, once they have done this, they remember to connect me to the outside world

They were, of course, meant to start work a long time ago, but the last fixed date was September 8th, when my MP and various other important people assured me that work would commence. Apparently the council planning department then insisted on the full six weeks consultation period before agreeing to the road closure. At least that's the excuse that BT are sticking to. What they fail to appreciate is that, if it took six weeks to get the planning through, and the start date is October 13th, then they can't have actually put the planning application in until September 1st. What then have they been doing since I first ordered the phone line in January?

Six weeks from October 13th takes us through to November 23rd, assuming bad weather doesn't stop play. That's just to replace the poles and string up some new cable. Then the Outreach blokes will turn up in their vans to move the entire village over to the new system. I'm guessing that they'll want to get existing lines done as quickly as possible and with minimum fuss - though I may be way off beam there - which probably means my new installation will have to wait until that's all done.

I'm still quietly confident that I will win my bet - no phone on the first anniversary of my placing the order. Then we'll have the wonderful fun that is trying to get a broadband connection...