Somewhere in Italy there is a boat minus it’s mast. I know this for a fact, because there is a boat’s mast stuck in my garden. I was going to get a shovel and dig the mast out, but knowing my luck the rest of the boat is probably still attached to the mast. Over the past three months I have thought of several uses for our yachts mast (did you notice it now belonged to a yacht) I thought it might be useful for drying towels or maybe Mr’s Sensible’s knickers. (I might edit that bit out later, it will depend, if I can hide her wet wooden spoon)
No these aren’t our scabby cats nor are they Mrs Sensible’s knickers
As you know, Telecom Italia are driving me nuts, we still don’t have any internet connection and to be honest, by the time Telecom Italia arrange for their technical man to test our line, I will probably be retired and sat in an old people’s home drinking grappa and causing lots and lots of trouble for the nurses.
If they are armed with a wet wooden spoons and needles, I might behave
At the moment the only way I can connect to the internet, is to sit in a café, drink copious quantities of coffee (in the morning) or lots of wine (in the afternoon) and use the cafés internet. Being an Englishman, as soon as the waitress removes my empty cup, I feel obliged to order another coffee, especially as I am taking up a table and using their internet.
Last week, I tried to vary the boredom of drinking cups of cappuccino by started with a caffé macchiato, I then moved onto a café marocchino, washed that down with a caffé doppio and just for good measure, I finished of the morning with a rather nice caffè corretto ( I then Jitterbugged to the Turkish toilet with big wide starring eyes. I suppose it is no wonder they think their resident Englishman is a bit mad.
Pecora Nera colides with the waitress as he jitterbugs to the loo
If I am at home and I want to use the internet, I create a hotspot on my little crappy Huawei phone, I place the phone on a chair in the garden, run back upstairs to my office and hope and pray it picks up a good enough signal so that I can quickly download my e mails. This drives me almost as crazy as jitterbugging around the café.
Yesterday I had an eureka moment; I knew there was a reason I hadn’t chopped down my flagpole. I suddenly realised it would make a fabulous internet mast. One plastic bag and a bit of string later, my mobile phone was hoisted 5 metres into the air and miracles of miracles, I had 3G, well maybe 1.5G but it did work and I managed to upload this post.
I told Mrs Sensible not to turn my flag into a cushion.
So if you decided to contact me, please, please, please use my contact form and don’t phone me, it is a nightmare when the phone rings. I have to run downstairs, play the last call on the bugle and lower the flag and all this takes time.
PS If you work for Telecom Italia or you know somebody who works for them, please tell them Pecora Nera is one of their dissatisfied customers.
Englishman in Italy 
We will move house in Rome next spring. The thought of losing my Internet during the transition has me in cold sweats! It will be the worst part of moving. That and finding a good spot for the cat boxes.
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Trying to deal with Italian firms is a nightmare, customer service is in short supply over here. We have just paid €100 to open a contract with the electric company and when we move we will no doubt have to pay to close it.
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10/10 for ingenuity! Make sure the bag is at half-mast when you’re not in…
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I need to find a headset with a 50 metre cable so that I can answer the phone from my little office. At the moment I have to run downstairs and quickly lower the phone. Nightmare.
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If only you could train the scabby cats to scramble up there and fetch it for you. Your team of catrievers would be the envy of the neighbourhood!
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I am trying to train the cats not to enter the house at the moment. It is not working.
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Why would you do that?!? That’s where they belong!
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Oh my life! Mrs S lets them in the house and I kick them out.. Stress stress stress
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It’s the work of Sisyphus!
You should fit them all with mobile phones. At least one of them is always going to be in a place where the signal is good…
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I am thinking of fitting them with travel tickets. By the way were did you say you lived?
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Next door to you – I WISH! (…but not when it comes to dealing with TC Italia!!!)
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It is too mad here for such a sensible person as yourself 😉
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I have a similar problem at work. No, it doesn’t involve a yatch’s mast, yet. I was able to get a connection when the other firm occupied the room next to my classroom. But they moved across the road. It was fine when they had the router near the front window, but they moved it to the back room; now with an extra wall between us sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Maybe I should look for a mast… 🙂
AV
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They moved the router away from the window!!! How childish, tell them you need it back. We need to be able to read your posts.
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Fortunately, or not, it’s only at work. My posting is done from home. But it was nice to have the net and be able to use it for a teaching aid. I must try to convince my bossette that she should install it.
Av
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I have used my comment, linked, in today’s post.
AV
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Many thanks AV
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Ha ha, ingenious! Kind of wish they were Mrs S’s smalls though – just to read the wooden spoon post when you can sit down and type again in a few days 😉
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Mrs Sensible is unarmed, I have hidden her wooden spoon. 🙂 🙂
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I’m sure she knows all of your ‘hiding’ places 😉
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She doesn’t know the hiding place behind the toolbox in the garage
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And she never will… 😉
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your necessity is indeed your invention—but I fear you may be a tad over stimulated—the kittens in the undies are adorable and I hope you may be able to now wean yourself off of the now stellar caffeine addiction and what ever else addiction may be brewing in the hang time of cafes 🙂
ciao ciao pecora. . .
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I can’t sit in a cafe and not drunk coffee.. Can I?
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I should call the Italian Coastguard to rescue you if I was you PN 😉
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Maybe I should wear a Mae West when I am in the garden
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I am sure she would have loved that PN 😉
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough” Mae West
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I had a lovely laugh at your expense – thank you, PN. You are a real MacGyver – good thinking that man! Maybe you can pole-vault into the premises of Italia Telecom overnight and tweak a few cables.
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Hi MM, it is a huge problem, I thought I might be able to watch reruns of the Sweeny or maybe use the internet to learn some more Italian words. But Telecom Italia are just… Well rubbish
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He he he he he – you really made me laugh here. You need to be good friends with the beauties, otherwise they will do all they can to destroy your mood 😀
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Hi Irene , I try really I do
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Good to hear 😉
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Stellar post as always, and the comments match the mood you have set so well. I’m awfully glad your life is full of angst for what would we read about otherwise? Growing roses, perhaps? And smelling them?
But, I do hope Telecom extracts the digit soon for your sake.
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Good Morning Yvonne,
I enjoy posting about the trials and tribulations of living in Italy, but by far the comments are much more fun.
I was in trouble yesterday with Mrs S (what again I hear you sigh) she had spent all afternoon trying to reach me and the only ones who heard the phone ringing was the birds circling the pole.
(This comment was sent to you courtesy of the phone on the pole)
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Today, as I was hurtling up and down the mountain range (in a car) going from Dismal Swamp to Cairns and back, I pondered your problem. Not Mrs S, I mean the phone. Could you buy a really cheap one to use either as the hot-spot or to answer your other half?
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Mmmm, another contract to set up with the crazy Italians… I will look at a cheap pay as you go. It needs to be a good phone or it won’t pick up the crappy signal we have 😦
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I love your ingenious use for the yacht’s mast! 🙂 I was thinking that the amount of coffee/wine you are paying for in the cafe to be able to use their internet might, by now, have amounted to you being able to buy/set up your own internet provider company
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Elaine, you are a star…….
I will start the Pecora Nera internet and wireless service.
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It is a good idea, but where will I find 10 thousand masts from old yacht and of course the mobile phones
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Hmmm, that could be a problem. However, you are very resourceful, so I’m sure you will come up with something. What about all the phone masts that we have here in the UK which disappear overnight to be replaced by taller and fatter ones? They must do something with the old ones – send them to a phone mast graveyard or something. Then there’s the mobile phones… we have a couple of old ones in the house….
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I was going to ask you to send me the spare phones, but I realised word would get out and before I could say “Sorry Mrs S it was just an idea” I would be surrounded by bags of old phones. And posta Italia would loose hundreds of bags. Some poor guy in Naples would be scratching his head as another 4 bags arrive
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Would the internet work with a network of tin cans and lengths of string? Post Italia wouldn’t have to lose anything then. 🙂
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I think this is the most sensible comment on the post. I will immediately start work on the Pecora Nera tin can network for monferrato. Who knows one day we may lay a tin can phone line under the Atlantic Ocean
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I am very excited to think that I was in at the very beginning of this….It is going to revolutionise communication… 😀
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Black sheep tin-to-net communications 🙂
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😀 😀
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I think your old phone poles (we call them poles here) are sent to Venice so they can pound them into the muck at the bottom of the canals and you can then tie up your boat. They certainly look like the ones they remove here.
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I suppose I could go and steal a couple.
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Probably no worse than what the Venetians used to do centuries ago.
You’ll find barges full of them along the Grand Canal.
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Brilliant – I think you might be right! 😀
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ahoy! ring, ring! ahoy! brilliant plan –
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I also had a good laugh, PN, but why don’t you get a Bluetooth earpiece, then you can answer your phone without having to get out the bugle or salute the flag?
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Sarah that is a brilliant idea. I think I have one somewhere. I will let you know how it works
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I hope it works! 🙂
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Hi Sarah. This is Italy, nothing works properly so it won’t be a problem
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How good are you with smoke signals?
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Not bad, but getting the loop on g is difficult and I can’t do joined up letters yet.
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You’ll get there faster than you’ll get that phone line, it seems like.
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I am discussing the problem with the Russians I hear they have a satellite that goes overhead from time to time
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Reading your posts always makes me laugh!
Thank you and all the best with connection … on the other hand if Italian services suddenly and miraculously become effective and efficient – here goes fodder for you blogs and our entertaining pleasure!
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Hi Daniela. This morning I am sat in my little Mini connecting to life via my phone. It is raining and the windows have steamed up. If I dont upload a post in the next 7 days it is because I have been arrested for steamy windows. Ps thanks for the nice comment.
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