The other evening I came home to find an unexpected voice mail waiting for me. (I sometimes wonder how we inadvertently, and oh so easily, slip into this terminology. We used to call them answer phone messages or just messages; now they’re quite unpretentiously voice mail). Anyway, it was unexpected to have an actual message. Generally, I open the front door and hear the welcoming peep peep of the machine alerting me to the fact that I am, after all, not friendless and that someone has been trying to contact me. And generally, on pressing the play button, there is nothing to listen to because it was some irritating sod from the sub-continent who neither knows me nor has a message, or voice mail, worth leaving. Sometimes, in these long since days of gender parity, these faceless cretins phone when I’m in and ask to speak to MISTER Green. If the mood fits, I tell them he’s dead. I’ve no idea whether he is but I suspect not. However, if they really knew me………..
Anyway, this particular message was from someone with whom I took a trip, at least fifteen years ago, to Ireland. That’s what I like about people: everyone’s so busy and time flies past but at least they make an effort to keep in touch on a regular basis. And they always think of you in such a meaningful way. This voice mail was along the lines of I’ve had rather a lot to drink and found this old CD of Irish music down the back of the settee whilst trying to retrieve a fag I’d dropped and remembered when we watched this band in Galway in 1866. It’s personal association isn’t it. Nice. I remember that night too because in Dorset you don’t get many of those Danny Boy evenings where you bump into someone at the bar who says no, you’re wrong, I’m in the real army in that wonderfully soft brogue that makes even the ugliest of men appear attractive. Or maybe that’s just Guinness. The important thing is that she’d kept both the CD and my phone number. I shall visit her soon and that’ll teach her for making random drunken phone calls.
All of this followed the exhausting and mind numbing train journey back from the city. Those trips are paranoia inducing: they’re so bloody awful that all you want to do is get indoors and get your woolly Primark PJ’s on. And because your aspirations are low but theoretically achievable, something’s bound to go wrong. I’m not naturally pessimistic: I think this feeling is a hang-over from coming home once to find I’d been burgled. All he’d taken was the Van Morrisson tickets but he’d smashed a window and been through the knicker drawer in the process. Consequently, every time you’ve been anywhere good, you’re forever sniffing the air for smoke three miles from arrival at the front door or listening for sirens as you approach your road. And as you get back into your securely locked home and hear that welcoming peep peep, you thank your particular god for small mercies.
Then you make the mistake of putting the light on and fusing everything in the house. At this point you dig out all those Santa decorated candles left over from Christmas and on discovering that a) you possess an out of date fuse box and b) gender parity does not in fact exist because you have no idea of the next step, you have to alert Frank from down the road. But at least you’ve got an old friend waiting on the voice mail who cared enough to save your number for fifteen years.
If someone asks again for Mr Green or for "the person responsible for the 'phone bill", you might try: "Sorry I'm the cleaner".
ReplyDeleteI have recently read the autobiography of Byron Rogers. I thought a couple of pieces could relate to your writings.
The first concerns his relationship with his mother:
'But what hurt me, and her, the old friend of my childhood, was how cross we got with each other. He commits the crime of growing up, and changing; she commits the crime of staying just as she was.
The second is a conversation in his local pub:
In the old days you just put poison down, and that was that. You can’t do that now. This Rentokil man who came he said to me, “Rats have rights now.” You put these sticky pads down, the rats stick to them, then you comme home alone, knock them on the head, fold them up in the pads, and write a number on them. Honest, that’s what you got to do. “Rats have rights,” that’s what the bloke said.
You haven't mentioned the rat lately - is that what you did?