The village telegraph! I am happy to report the village telegraph seems to be working reasonably well these days. It makes me wonder how these things work and how valuable they are.
The latest example is trying to get in touch with a helpful, keen and very willing young man called Joe, who has worked for us before with his chainsaw. Joe lives in the village, somewhere. The problem was that I couldn’t find his phone number but I thought I knew where he lived.
So one day I knocked on the door of the house I was thinking was his, it was on the other side of the village. It turned out I had got the house completely wrong but the lady said her husband might know of someone who could help. I wrote down my phone number for her and waited to see what would follow.
Then a few days later, as if by magic, the village telegraph worked and I had a phone call.
Ring ring.
“Hi. Are you the bloke who wants a tree cut down?”
“Yes I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Luke. My neighbour told me you spoke to his friend’s Nan who is friendly with the brother of the lady you spoke to. You knocked on her door a few days ago?”
So Luke turned up at the Quirky Museum with his mate and his chainsaw a few days later. We couldn’t agree a price but somehow Joe heard we were trying to reach him. Joe said the job was too difficult this time, so we agreed he could replace a gatepost instead. He put us in touch with Kyle who has a bit more expertise with trees and he’s just been to do the job. All good but he hasn’t left us with as much firewood as I’d hoped.
So in a roundabout way, the village telegraph does work. It does take a little time for A to speak to B who then lets C knows that D needs to contact E etc. and I have to be patient. The nice thing about using tradesmen in the village is that any news about naff work gets transmitted around the village telegraph much quicker, so they behave themselves. Outsiders doing work here might be less careful, or at least that’s our theory.
The flip side is that clients who don’t provide refreshments up to the required standard get an iffy name. This time Kyle and his mate had the above tray of refreshments to keep them going; it includes the obligatory Hobnobs. Rachel even supplied them with toasted sandwiches later on which went down well.
Meanwhile a neighbour had seen the work happening and came around to ask for a quote on her trees which needed some TLC.
So let’s raise a glass to the village telegraph. It works by relaying those messages through a random chain of people and the message eventually gets through without too many Chinese whispers.
Is there any value in this? Or perhaps it is simply gossip material for nosey-parkers?
Related post – Do you tip tradesmen?