I was like Mr Bean at the beginning of one of his skits. Everything was going right. I was booked in to the splendid Park Lane Hotel in Piccadilly and had done a bracing walk around the Monopoly board. I smuggly took out my UK-Australian power-plug converter and plugged my computer into the wall.
I then reached for the telephone to unclip the line, and plug it into my modem so I could transmit my rhinestones of wisdom to Australia.
Alas, the line disappeared directly into the phone. And at the wall end was an alien British plug, the like of which I had never seen before. Bean-like, my bottom lipped pouted and my eyes frowned in bemusement.
I darted for the phone book. Tandy had a dozen listings. One was in Kings Road, a short distance from the hotel _ at least one end of Kings Road was a short distance from the hotel. The other, where Tandy turned out to be, was several kilometres and an hour of drizzle away.
But before long, there I was at Tandy, Bean-like, smiling with the whites of my eyes at a metre of cord with a plastic clip at one end that fitted my computer, and at the other end a plastic clip identical to the one that slotted into the British telephone socket.
My eyes and jaw waggled in delight. Oh, so easy. Back to the hotel. I inserted the Tandy plug into the wall socket and clicked on the modem. NO CONNECTION.
Several more tries and many pouting of lips and frowns of bemusement later, I reconnected the phone rang the switch.
“”Yes, sir, some of our guests do have problems with computers, especially Americans. Can I get you a BT line? It works for some of our American guests”
Privatisation and competition in Britain have resulted in incompatible lines for different modems. But at least we were getting somewhere. “”There’s your line, sir”
But I was holding on to the phone, which was plugged into the wall socket where my modem plug should go. Could the switch give me a BT line in 30 seconds time so I could change plugs?
Arms and legs disappear under the mahogany table. But the hotel’s plug is now jammed in the socket. A hand reaches up for the Swiss Army knife.
An invisble audience puts their hands over their eyes and winces with embarrassment. “”Don’t do it, Mr Bean, don’t do it.” Gouge, scrape. I pull the cord and it jerks free. I am holding up four frayed wires and the plug is still stuck in the wall.
Bang. I hit my head on the underside of the mahogany table. Undeterred I see that unlike an Australian telephone plug this is mounted by a plate on to the wall. I see two screws at the side of the plate and smile. I reach for the Swiss Army knife, undo the plate and free the broken plug from the inside.
I glance nervously around and see a second telephone by the bed. I swap them over in a trice, hoping the next guest doesn’t need an emergency phone call in the middle of the night, and ring the switch to retrieve the BT line.
NO CONNECTION. More lip pouting and bemusement. The switch explains: “”If you disconnect the line, the BT line falls out. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll send someone to help.”
The night porter in a morning coat and pin-striped trousers raised a Jeeves-like eyebrow at the wrecked socket. “”You will need a double adapter, sir. I’ll send out for one.” But it still didn’t work.
This was some electronic Tower of Babel? Was I being punished for forsaking the pen and quill, like the sons of Noah were punished for building the tower as a homing device to help them disobey the command to go to the corners of the earth? Instead of being cursed with hundreds of different languages (gosh how politically incorrect the Bible is), we are cursed with every country on earth having different telephone and power plugs.
Well, if thine eye offends thee, cut it out. Inspirationally, I pulled the raw telephone wires from the socket in the wall and cut the plug from the modem lead. It was then a simple matter of connecting each of the four separate strands by twisting the exposed copper wire.
Alas, the British cable had a blue, white, green and red strand whereas the Australian modem cable had yellow, black, green and red. It made for a Lotto of combinations. It would have to wait till morning.