Musings from the Merse
Monday, June 16, 2008
Its Not our fault-literally. And Have a Nice Day
Huttonian volunteered to help our post mistress with getting a fault repaired on her BT ISDN line-it has been off and on for weeks meaning that on several occasions the pensioners have had to be turned away as the payment of their money is an on line procedure. So I went on to BT.Com to try and speed repairs up.
Bt.Com 'report a fault' informed that this was not a BT number so can't help. I confirmed from the Post Mistress that it is.
I then went on to the BT interactive chat help facility and after being first in the queue and therefore having to wait only 10 minutes had the following chat:
Sean: Hi there, please give me a moment while I review your query.
Huttonian: I have just reconfirmed that 01289 386*** is the correct number for the ISDN line and it is BT
Sean: Hi Huttonian, I am sorry for the information that you are receiving from BT.com. The only other way to track a fault is by calling 0800 800 154, this is the number for our faults department. An advisor will be able to give you an update on the fault.
Huttonian: OK Thanks but it is strange that your online help does not recognise the number
Sean: Yes that does sound strange but this happens on occasions espesially with ISDN lines, I will report this to BT.com
Sean: Is there anything esle (sic) i can help you with today?
Huttonian: No Thanks and good bye
Sean: bye bye, have a nice day
Sean has disconnected.
I went on to 0800 800 154.
Guess what? The nice automated lady told me she could not help. It was not a BT number. Go to my service provider.
And no way past that barrier.
When we had the post office we paid pensions out of a cash box and wrote everything down in a book. The cash box always opened but occasionally the PO issue biro ran out of ink. We used another one with out any advice from the interactive help chat line.
And if the phone didn't work we had a nice quiet morning.
And we generally had
a Nice Day.Thanks for offering.
(The image is not the Hutton Phone Box which is the bog standard 'new model' -this is much smarter. But may not work. And BT may have disowned it)
Labels: BT, Faults, Having a nice day, Hutton, Post Office
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Rural Isolation as its ups and downs but a real up is the practice
of the successive posties not only to deliver mail but to pick it up as well. When we had the village post office on our kitchen table, open 9-1 Mondays and Thursdays Alan the long serving postman used to march into the house, plonk our mail beside the washing up and take the post office plus private mail away with him-and the pickup and delivery was regardless of whether the post office was 'open' or not. When the post office deserted the Old Manse for the Village Hall the same service has continued with the post entering and leaving via the boot box outside our back door.
Every day, bar Sundays, for ten and a half years we have had some kind of mail delivered here. Often just junk, mostly useless catalogues (impossible to stop), but something.
Until yesterday. Nothing, And, horrors of horrors, two important missives (vital crossword entries) left uncollected. What could have happened? The BBC Blether Centre was talking about travel disruption-70mph winds and the danger of power lines collapsing, trees blown over, high sided lorries swept off the A1 but, always, come Rain,snow, Hurricane,Earthquake (and there was a small one this morning south of us),the Postie gets through.
But not yesterday
If he does not show up today we will have to consider upgrading our crossword entries to First Class. Rural Isolation indeed
AS WH Auden put it
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
But if the Postie does not turn up its all a wasted effort. Isn't it?
Labels: Post Office, Posties, Rural Isolation
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
LAST POST (OFFICE?)
Post offices remain under threat throughout Scotland and around us we have already lost a number over the past few years. Someone had been willing to reopen the Paxton sub post office but was refused permission as it was 'too near Hutton' Now Allanton has gone and ours, in the Village Hall, carries on two days a week but under constant threat of the chop. Perhaps some of the bloggees will not know that the Old Manse once housed the post office. When we arrived in 1997 we were persuaded to take it on (having been run by the former owners)-involved the use of the kitchen table, Mondays and Thursdays 9-1. Our young lodger ran it although Huttonian was the 'owner'(and had an official badge to prove it) Then came computerisation and our lodger departed with the PO computer moving 15 feet or so into the 'Milk room' off the kitchen and run by a neighbour. She eventually got fed up with the awesomely Byzantine, impersonal Post Office bureaucracy(and unreliable on line help line) and the Old Manse was abandoned and it is now in the Village Hall with slightly reduced hours but with an increased clientele including at least one regular customer from distant Paxton (2.2 miles to The Cross)We had about 17 pensioners, the odd stamp sale, a bus pass or two and that was about it.
The poem below, published in the Eildon Tree magazine, conveys the atmosphere of the late 90s up Kirk Lane. I hasten to add that the personalties referred to are based on imaginary figments rather than any real people, alive-or by now, dead.
COMMUNITY POST OFFICE
Up the pock-marked lane,
harassed by nettles and bombarded
by the odd petulant butterfly
they come. Singly, spaced out.
Mondays usually. Our pensioners.
A hardy (but dwindling) band
Homing in on the kitchen table
just cleared of cornflakes
and the smudges of marmalade
Where the cash awaits a second
opinion. Not quite trusting
the nimble fingers
of the young Post Mistress.
Rheumy eyes follow each crisp note
slapped on the table
silently mouthing the mounting value
A wordless nod, a snap of the handbag
money vanishes
like a startled rabbit.
Some coins reluctantly
returned for a second class stamp
(these are careful Border folk)
Before relaxing into
first class gossip.
Or a weather forecast.
Or a pill by pill
commentary leaving
no bowel unturned.
Ping of the bell
Another customer thresholds
So time to go, ritual completed.
‘See you next Monday. Same time
probably’
Certainly.
You can bet your last
first class stamp,
on that.
The image shows the cutting edge of PO technology in the late 1990s early noughties. 2nd class stamp 19p so not so long ago. We were kindly allowed to keep this as a token of the POs appreciation and they have now moved on to a more advanced version in Huttpn Hall
Labels: Hutton, Old Manse, Post Office
