We obviously don't use our landline very much

We turned the SKY box on over the weekend and a message came up suggesting that we would have more interactivity if we connected the box to a phone line.  This came as something of a surprise.  As far as I was concerned, it *was* connected to a phone line.  I investigated further.  The SKY box was plugged in. All seemed OK.  Apart from the little matter that the phone line was absolutely dead.

Except that we still had the internet.  Odd.  But a cursory investigation showed that the phone line and the internet use different parts of the telephone signal.  That's why you have to have a splitter.  So not absolutely cut off from the outside world.

And come to think about it, almost nobody rings us on the landline anyway.  At least, not for personal calls. They Skype us, or send us text messages or even put messages on Facebook and Twitter.  Call centres in India use it and people trying to rort money out of The Builder use it, but that's about it.  We didn't really even know how long it had been out of action.  The Builder had had a phone call from India earlier in the week but the line could have gone down at any time after that. We didn't even know if it was a problem at our end, at BT's end or even in Tupton itself.

So we did nothing for a day or two.  We had internet. We had mobiles. We didn't care very much.  But then it crossed my mind that we pay for a full service and couldn't presently use it, so perhaps we ought to do something about it.  So I filled in an online form, ran a diagnostic check and lo - there was a problem at BT's end.  Which they had had fixed by the end of that day.  Have to say I was impressed with their problem fixing.

But we still haven't used the landline - except  that I rang home on it to check that it really was working.  Mostly if I want to talk to The Builder (when I am not there with him) I use Skype or his mobile!