This is Random Older Thing number 11 of 62. You are Random Reader 696.We've also argued about:
Margret keeps making me answer the phone. I'll be sitting watching the final fifteen seconds of a TV serial that I've been following for seven months (say), the phone will ring and she'll jut her head towards it and instruct 'Get that'. The thing about this is; we both know it will never, ever, ever, though-we-continue-till-the-Earth-spirals-down-into-the-sun, ever be for me. I've received perhaps three phone calls in the last eleven years, and that's counting people asking if I have a few moments to hear about an exciting new development in the area of index-linked pensions. Everyone I know either emails me or sends me dog excrement through the post, depending on the context. Margret, on the other hand, is legally obliged to have a phone clasped to the side of her head on her passport photo.
What's even more irritating, is that as I, inevitably, hand her the phone she'll hiss 'Who is it?' Presumably to cut through that .04 of second it would be before she finds out for herself. Oh, no, don't you go thinking it's because she might to do the panic-faced, hand-waving 'Say I'm not in!' thing, oh, Lordy, no, that's certainly not why seh asks. Proof of this is that I say 'Just leave the ansafone on - then you can hear who it is before you pick up.' But -
'Get that.'
'No need, the ansafone's on.'
- this news always hits her like an electric shock; she leaps towards the phone to pick up before the crucial fourth ring. And, incidentally, always fails. 'Hello, I...[great wail of feedback] Oh damn, the ["Hello, we can't get to..."] Hold on... [random hammering at buttons, "the phone right now", feedback] Mil! Miiiiiiiiiil! Stop this thing now!'
Oh, and while we're here, if I called my friend Mark to ask, for example, 'What time's the train tomorrow?' it'd go:
Me: Hi, Mark? What time's the train tomorrow?
Mark: It's 9.20, Mil.
Me: OK, cheers.
Mark: Bye.
If Margret calls a friend to ask 'What time's the train was tomorrow?' it might come in a shade under three hours. If our house ever catches fire and Margret makes the call, then the embers will be cold by the time the fire brigade arrives. Though doubtless they'll all arrive knowing that Margret thinks 'not a dark colour for the bathroom because she feels it'll make it look small'.