Well, it turns out I’ve been surfing the net for the last two years via a corroded 1950’s copper cable, stripped of it’s insulation by years of under-house weather conditions and rat nibbling, the wires slowly snapping one by one, until late Friday night the final one went, leaving me with no net access for the entire weekend.
However several sweaty hours of work by Telstra engineers has resulted in the installation of a brand new, shiny modern cable, which will carry my signals at blinding speed, until they arrive at the 1950’s junction box out front, where they will slow to the velocity of an arthritic dog.
I did notice however while waiting on the Telstra faults queue on Saturday morning for ten minutes (amazingly swift service, on weekdays it takes at least forty, if you must have line faults try and arrange them for the weekend) just how much the Telstra theme song (“Making it easier to share” c’mon you know the words!) sounds like a Sergeant Pepper era Beatles song. Penny Lane in particular. I don’t know if this is an impressive testement to the taste of the souless muzak engineer who put the tune together, or a depressing symptom of the continuing abuse of some of the best music of the 20th Century musical cannon. I suppose it depends how long you’re on hold for.
