Solstice Apologies and Excuses

Not my fault! Honest...

Well, firstly, sorry for the hiatus, hello again and a happy Solstice to you all! Whether you will get to read this is still largely unknown but there are some hopeful signs this morning.

Let me explain. We live a low-impact, off-grid life in a field in a forest in a mobile not-spot and our only technological connection to the outside world is a pair of twisted copper wires running for 6 kilometres, up through the trees on poles, our last one being pole no.13 (Lyn's lucky number, as it happens) with the next 800 metres of cable being buried under a forest track and the final furlong just laid along the ground to the house.

above: view west from Mynydd Penrhos. Lyn just visible by tree on left.

Lyn sorted the phone line with BT back in 1993. Prior to that, for the first few years on our place we had no form of communication off-site other than shouting or physically going somewhere. When you have no connection with the larger world, something which was of course the norm not very long ago, it does make you think a bit more before you undertake anything vaguely risky...

BT, not realising where we lived, signed a standard contract with Lyn, for about £30 and with a month guarantee for the completion of the work. We just got on with our lives as nothing happened other than we had an occasional glimpse of a BT van going up or down a forest track or the council road.

Finally, after a month had passed, a rather concerned BT engineer wandered up our track and asked me, rather tentatively, if I was Mr. Dixon. There was a look of palpable relief in his face when I answered in the affirmative.

“Oh, thanks God!” he exclaimed, “We've been looking for you for a month!”

Another few weeks passed (burying 800 metres of armoured cable takes a while) and then, like a small miracle, we had the wonderful speaking-at-a-distance device. Oh, what fun we had!

BT were well beyond their deadline and we ended up getting the phone put in for free plus £300 compensation towards our first bills- nice one Lyn! Once the locals further up the valley heard about it, they all rushed to sign standard contracts too and the compensation BT ended up paying out dwarfed our little gains- One friend, Gwilym, put in for a standard landline and a business line- compensation for failure to provide the business line in a timely fashion was £30 a day! Nice one Gwil!

Over the last thirty years our line has taken some real stick. To begin with the poles across the then Forestry Commission's track were too short so timber wagons just ripped the line down, repeatedly, until BT eventually replaced the poles with longer ones. This didn't stop one wagon cutting the corner, hitting a pole and snapping the line. At least it was an easy fault to spot. Then Natural Resources Wales took over from the Forestry Commission and decided to replace all the old concrete culverts under the track with new plastic ones (a completely unnecessary task), and the mechanical excavator tore up the buried armoured cable (whoops).

Almost needless to say, running a phone line on poles in a forest is in itself beset with ongoing challenges, namely, trees grow, branches reach poles and cables and occasionally fall down on them. If you count up the number of times our cable has been snapped, there must be well over a dozen connections on the line now, each one offering a chance for moisture to make an entrance, especially if the connection boxes are fitted upside down, as has happened more than once. I can't remember many winters over the last thirty years when the phone line hasn't failed on at least one occasion.

Which leads me, finally, to the point. Our internet connection has been playing up...hence lack of contact.

above: fool on frozen pond. Not to be emulated unless you have a good mobile signal or a functioning landline.

We noticed something else going on last year when it seemed to give up the ghost after hard frosts. This started happening again this winter, when a night time low of -6.4 appeared to kill it. The next day, a half hour after the sun came out and lo! The internet magically reappeared. Sadly the condition has worsened and now no frost is required and it dies with just a bit of rain which is rather unhelpful as, generally speaking, in this part of Cymru at this time of year, it is mostly raining....

This has made doing anything on the internet extremely random, in particular, maintaining regular posts on Substack. We got there in the end, yes, I'm making an excuse for not posting, my bad!

Several BT and Open-Reach engineers have fiddled at the exchange, wandered the woods following the line and called at our place to poke probes into my socket (not as rude as it sounds). All nice people and good to know they're doing something but they haven't been able to find the problem. Usually by the time they appear the internet has magically manifested itself again so there's nothing to diagnose.

Hence, be aware that even if you get to read this, I'm afraid normal service has not yet been renewed and there may well be further delays until we get to a drier season. Or- dramatic music plays- until the new ESN mast which has gone up just 400metres from our place becomes operational and we can get a mobile signal (It is worth pointing out here that we would rather not have a mobile signal or a 40 metre mast but you have to take advantage of opportunities when they arise). This could give us a theoretical 25Mb a second which would certainly be an improvement on our current 3.5Mb...

Or, even better? Wandering in the woods and ending up looking at telegraph pole 13, I find that someone has run a fibre optic cable all the way up from the exchange and there's a big, unused reel lying at the foot of the pole. The last engineer told us that it is for us! Will wonders never cease? Apparently we and the community of Abergeirw, further up the valley, are being upgraded to full fibre prior to the copper network being abandoned some time quite soon.

Well, fibre would be good but abandoning the copper network seems a bit radical. I've mentioned “Grandmother's Seeds” here previously, a story that points out the value of hanging onto older, apparently outdated stuff because, well, you never know when it might prove invaluable. Still, its not really my circus..

So, I'm going to try and get this uploaded and will hopefully be bringing you more episodes of Konsk and other pieces from E.S.P. Adapt, including some more on Fire! Which, I am afraid, is looking for a close encounter with us here in the forest, and may well be hoping to call near you, too.

Till then, I hope you get to enjoy some seasonal cheer, despite the bleakness of the news. In particular, we have passed the pivot point of the year and once more begin our long slow tumble back towards the summer and the light.

Many thanks to you all, old subscribers and new, for being here. Take care of yourselves and this around you and I hope to meet again soon, if only via a pair of twisted copper wires.

above: newcomer making the best of available shelter. Cares not a jot for an internet connection, whether fast or slow.

Diolch am Heuldro Y Gaeaf, Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newyddd Dda I chi i gyd.

With thanks for the Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Hwyl!

Chris

As always, this box below is for you !