It was late afternoon, wet and windy, sometime in the mid 1960s before the GPO Telephone Service became Post Office Telephones. The drop wires back then were a pair of uninsulated cadmium copper wires supported on ceramic insulators via a "halo ring" at the pole top and on a bracket at the subscribers' premises.
Walking home, I turned the corner and as I drew close to the pole from which our service pair originated, a clattering rattle, clonk, bump was heard. Looking up the pole I saw that the DP cover (a circular cover with a central thumb screw) was hanging by its security chain and being blown about in the wind. The rain was, of course, now blowing into the DP. Hmm . . .
Once indoors and with fur still dripping, I picked up the telephone handset and upon hearing the dialling tone dialled
ENG. Very promptly a male voice answered with one word -- "Engineers". I recounted my observation and quoted the DP number. The response was that he would come out that afternoon, attempt to dry out the exposed connections and refit the DP cover.
About 20 minutes later a small, bottle-green Morris minor van stopped beside the pole. The driver walked around the pole twice, just looking at it on the first circuit and then kicking it on the second circuit. Suitably satisfied, the ladder was put up -- using the rear wheel of the van as a stop for the foot of the ladder -- and wearing the leather security belt, the pole was climbed. About a yard of some absorbent cloth was pulled from the jacket pocket, the inside of the DP and the inner surface of its cover were dried (as well as the weather would allow) and the cover was securely refitted. Job done, ladder stowed on the van's roof-rack and away it chugged.
Fifty year on from the event -- I don't think that sort of instantaneous action would even be considered.
