How many BT Engineers does it take to connect a phone line?

Five, apparently.

First someone called Brian comes round to 'survey' the site. Brian has to work out what work is involved. This takes Brian 5 minutes. But that's one day's work you see. And Brian doesn't work Fridays. So we have to wait for Monday.

On Monday, another guy comes round. Let's call him Pete. Pete replaces the faux gold phone socket with an approved BT one. He checks the wiring from the flat to the comms cupboard upstairs and installs an NTTP box in the cupboard. This box will split out the wire from the street into up to 8 separate channels to serve the flats. Pete explains that because the pole is on the other side of the street, a hoist has to attend to suspend the wire from the pole to the second storey of our building. The hoist will come in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, Pete calls to say that the hoist is stuck on another job and won't be able to make it until Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Bob (who he? who cares!) calls and says that the hoist is broken. Clutch problem. Dreadful. Another hoist will have to come on Wednesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bob turns up in person at the flat for no discernible reason. He inspects the new socket and the NTTP box. I persuade him that he ought to do something, chiefly by asking what the purpose of his visit is. He drills a hole in the wall for the cable to come through and then leaves. I suspect Bob wanted a quick job to do so that he could go home early.

I've done a lot of work with field engineers, you see, and they're all cheeky monkeys and know how to play their systems. Utilities engineers generally aren't allowed to leave a phase of work half done - leaving whole jobs half done is fine, but they aren't normally allowed to leave holes half dug, wires half connected etc. So if you want to play the system the trick is to do a small job early in the afternoon so that you won't have enough time left to start and finish a phase of a big job. Then you can go home early.

On Wednesday, the hoist rocks up and two cups of coffee later we have a dial tone.

I have no idea how long this would have taken to achieve if I actually had a job to do...

Broadband should be with us some time next week.....