Please babble after the tone
So my mother calls me today.
I find a missed call from her (I had gone down to pick up our new Window Wizard that had just being delivered: oh the excitement - yes, we are that sad, but how else are we going to clean our 2m50 x 2m50 windows inside and out?) and I worry. She seldom calls and we've only just spoken, like, about ten days ago.
Then a voicemail alert comes through. Surely she didn't leave a message? She hates that contraption, and you may very well imagine that you would too if you did not understand a word of English, and started speaking when you think 'that miss' (as she calls my T-Mobile recorded default outgoing message) has finished speaking, only to be interrupted by 'that miss' adding 'If you want to re-record your message, press hash'.
But a message she did leave, with her distinctive five-second pause and then mumbling to herself 'I wonder if that miss is done?', before finally saying 'Hello, just wanted to say - congratulations, best wishes, many happy returns, and from your brother too. Bye.'
Say what? I noticed time has been moving on kind of faster than usual lately, but surely it's not Christmas? Don't tell me I fell asleep on the train back from work, and it's now February and I have just turned forty.
Is she cruelly rubbing in the fact that I did not get the job I was interviewed for? That's it: the old woman has gone batty.
I collect my thoughts, start dinner, then pick up my phone to call her back and notice the date on the display. It's October 18th - my name day, a rapidly dying out European custom which is still fiercely maintained by eighty-year-old ladies like my mother.
Aah, bless her.
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