Dial M for Muzak

The Sage was not happy when our internet connection went down this morning.  I was cooking his breakfast (yes, really, I am that good to him) when he called through plaintively.  Then the phone rang, but was dead when he picked it up.  I managed to get the broadband going again, though it was a bit iffy for the rest of the morning, but it has been blissfully peaceful as regards bells all day.

It's no good, I can't be doing with a tune for the landline.  I don't have one even for my mobile actually as none of the ones on offer suit me - I know what I would have if I could be bothered to download a tune, but I never have - I have the nearest thing to the sound of a proper telephone, with a different ringtone (not a tune) if it's from home, but I just want 'ring-ring' from the home phone.  I wonder if I'm in a minority.  We don't have a doorbell but if we did, that would just ring, too.

An old man we used to deliver Meals on Wheels to had a doorbell that played a succession of nursery rhyme tunes - I don't know if it was random or whether they were played in order, but when you rang his bell and he answered the door, we just smiled at each other and didn't try to speak through 'Boys and Girls Come Out to Play" or "Oranges and Lemons" or whichever of the others jingled away cheerily.  It played a whole verse and went on for some time.  Here, we've got a knocker on the front door, but no one who knows us goes there but comes to the porch at the side, and either taps hopefully on the glass or just opens the door and shouts.  If the front door is knocked on, it's either someone who is lost or the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, who are very formal and never sidle.

The Sage went next door to phone to tell the telephone company about our dead line this evening, but he was back minutes later, saying he wasn't going to listen to muzak.  I suggested that there would be muzak whatever time of the day he rings - and there will be, of course, which makes him impatient.  It's one of the few things that does; normally he is good-humoured and long-tempered even with me when I'm being quite annoying.  He has been known to try several times, waiting just a couple of minutes each time, until I have a go and usually get through in less than five.  But I'm still enjoying not receiving phone calls, so I'm likely to hang back rather longer this time.

He went to check the bill, by the way.  It was paid earlier this month, so we haven't been cut off deliberately.