You have to be in the category of ancient to remember Flanders and Swan, two Englishmen who wrote and performed mildly comic songs.
The dinner-suited duo had a big hit with The Gas Man Cometh, a story of domestic woe. It started with an engineer calling to release a jammed valve. The exercise ended up requiring the services of gasman, carpenter, electrician, glazier and painter to return the poor householder’s premises to their original condition. Except the painter painted over the gas valve, so the whole process had to start again. Every homeowner knows the feeling.
The Gasman came to mind when two telecommunications companies came to my Glasgow tenement. Their work was part of the nationwide wide installation of high-speed fibre broadband services.
We owners were asked by our factor to give consent to one of the companies for the installation of equipment. Assured it was a minor job involving a hole being dug then filled in, we gave assent by our silence.
What we got was a couple of metres of big bright metal industrial trunking attached to the doorframe of the front entrance to the property. The ugliness of the installation brought shivers as each owner calculated the downward effect on........