Ring, Telephone Ring

Some things in life you do tend to take for granted.  Dogs go "woof-woof", cockerels go "cockadoodledoo" and telephones go "ring ring".  However, sometimes you are faced with a situation that makes you reassess everything you thought you knew.

Last Sunday at a brocante in a lovely little village called Celles sur Né, just south of Cognac, we found an old fashioned black desk telephone from the early 1960s.  I've been looking out for a vintage phone for ages but when I have come across these little gems in the past the dealers generally want about 50€ for them. This price is then, more often than not, followed by a nonchalant Gallic shrug when they are quizzed as to whether the phone is in fact working.

With this in mind you can only imagine my delight when I found a cute little black vintage phone with an asking price of only 2€.  I looked across at Spike to confirm that I had in fact heard correctly (I have been known to get into a bit of a muddle between my twos and twelves) and having been given the nod I happily proceeded to snap her arm off (metaphorically speaking of course).

Ahhh.... aint' it sweet!  The ideal telephone for silent films  

For the diminutive price of 2€ I naturally understood that it was highly unlikely that the telephone would be functional but thought that it would make a lovely decorative piece all the same and if, by some small miracle, it did work then that would be a bonus. What we discovered next, however, I hadn't predicted.

Having spent a good half an hour cleaning it up (it was what can only be described as très très ooky!) we plugged it into the phone socket and Spike announced triumphantly that he had a dialing tone.  With excitement building I phoned our new purchase from my mobile.... nothing.  Spike picked up the phone receiver anyway and joy of joy we had a very silly if a little muffled telephone conversation (not surprising considering we were sitting next to each other at the time).

'Property of the State'... foiled again by French bureaucracy!

The next obvious step was to dial out and...can you believe it...success! (followed by yet another incredibly silly and muffled conversation).  So it seemed it was just a case of opening it up and fixing the connection to the bell.   A few minutes later we could both be found staring at the inner workings of the phone with dumbstruck expressions as the realisation dawned on us that there was no bell to fix.

Having 'googled' various vintage phone related forums it became apparent that this situation is not as unusual as you might imagine as many office desk phones had an external ringer back then... well who'd have thought it?
  

So I have learned never to take anything for granted as apparently over here dogs go "ouah! ouah!", cockerels go "cocorico" and phones are sometimes known to be mute.

In short the situation at present is that we have a lovely vintage phone that works perfectly as long as you have the gift of telepathy or only need to dial out.  We are now on the lookout for an external bell and have earmarked a couple of examples online that might do the trick and then it's just the simple matter of figuring out how to connect it!

Wish us bonne chance with that one!