Well, I shall defy Givinya and wish everyone all the best for the New Year, despite the fact that I know that this year shall, like all the preceeding ones, be a mixture of highs and lows. It's okay for me to wish you all the good things and the absolute minimum of the bad, I hope?
Of course, it didn't have a great start at this end.
I was excited some years ago that the phone number granted to us by the powers that be in Telstra was easy to remember.
Traditionally around our town all the phone numbers had the same first four digits, so you only really needed to remember the last four. As town has grown, and businesses and government agencies wanted lots of extentions of the same basic number there have been new numbers issued that have the same initial three numbers, but allow for another 10,000 numbers to be used on top of that. Growth in regional Queensland is a much desired comodity, but does have some draw-backs on an individual basis.
In this case, on our individual phone number basis.
So far as I have been able to discover, our easy to remember phone number has the last four digits the same as one of the extensions for the local constabulary. So anyone who is not paying attention and dials the "standard" first four digits gets yours truly. Congratulations to me!
This has lead to some really funny phonecalls when the person on the other end of the line has got up a head of steam and launches into their story without paying attention to how I've answered the phone. My response to their irate, "...and what are you going to do about it?" is usually along the lines of, "I don't think I can help you very much, I presume you are after the cops?" and possibly leaves much to be desired from their perspective.
There are some phone calls that just go dead when I answer, and others that hesitantly question, "Is this the police?", but the funny ones are the ones where I get their whole life story before they think to question who I am.
Of course, there are the ones that aren't so funny. 2.30am New Years Day is not really amusing, except that the poor lady was so appalled that she'd got a wrong number, and I was so asleep that I wasn't really at my best. She was so apologetic and nice and well-spoken and told me to go back to sleep (she could obviously hear my brain grinding into starting position to work out what was going on) and she was sorry to bother me, and Happy New Year.
Socially appropriate farewell?
... probably - what other options would there be when you've woken a complete stranger out of a deep sleep at 2.30am?
... Approximately None!
A very encouraging week
3 days ago
4 comments:
when the phone rings at that hour, my heart usually stops for a moment!
Happy New Year to you also xx
My phone number used to be one digit different from the local train station, which happened to be a 'hub' station for interstate and country trains. I was constantly getting phone calls asking if the XPT (NSW country train) was running on time.
Oh, Femina that could be so much fun - tell them it was 1/2 an hour early and hear them panic.
Then again, I hope they didn't have any services that arrived at midnight.
I must admit, last night wasn't the worst. One night I had one phone call at about 2am and a second at about 2.30. Just enough time to fall asleep.
Bummer! I thought my friends with a number nearly the same as the hospital had it bad, but a police-y number does sound worse.
Very funny.
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