AS
SOMEONE who doesn’t get out much, I love receiving phone calls.
It’s a great
way of saying what you mean without giving your fellow conversationalist any
clues about your REAL thoughts due to the lack of facial expressions and eye
contact.
Mind
you, that doesn’t work so well with VOIP calls that have video. Anyway, I
digress.
There
are some calls I could do without, in particular those annoying Spam calls that
offer you nothing in the hope you’ll be stupid enough to follow their
instructions.
I
have had a call from a “company” on three successive days this week. On
answering, I get a pre-recorded message from a fellow in a fairly clipped
English accent who excitedly tells me I am eligible for a new, free gas boiler.
If I would like to discuss this, press “2”. If I would like to cancel future calls from the company, press “9”.
Yeah,
right. Call me an old cynic but I wonder how much the return call would cost
me? A few quid a minute? More?
The
fact that we don’t have gas in the village and therefore the amazing offer is
useless to me is fairly irrelevant – these scammers, wherever they are based, haven’t
got a clue who they are calling or where. They just want you to press “2” or “9”.
For
the record, the three calls came from three totally different numbers, despite
offering the same fantastic deal.
On
first inspection, the calls seemed to be from the UK – from a 01223 number, a
01729 and a 01228. That’s Cambridge, Settle and Carlisle.
But
it isn’t what it seems. For after the code in each case there were five
numbers. As far as I remember, we added a sixth digit to our phone numbers back
in the 1980s.
Which
leaves me wondering which exotic part of the world I would have been calling had
I pressed “2” or “9”.
IT
STARTED snowing in deepest Suffolk this morning.
It must be bad because it has
been on the news.
I
reckon we have had at least a centimetre of the white stuff so I guess that now
means food rationing at the local supermarket, schools closed for a week, the
railways grinding to a halt and a rush to buy blankets.
Makes
you proud to be British.
I
AM pleased to announce that I have been able to cross another item off my to-do
list – Dry January.
Completed it on January 4, a new record for me.
