Ring tone

So, I was quite tired this morning on the train to work and, after Woking, realising I had a double seat to myself, I decided to have a snooze for the rest of the journey. I quite often do this. Apart from the fact that I can’t read for very long in the mornings without my eyes closing, it’s clearly a genetic trait I picked up from my father.

Dad had the uncanny knack (with one huge exception) for waking up at his stop either way. I used to catch the train to work with him and he’d no sooner sit down than he was asleep. I think he was dropping off on the way down. I’m not that good but I have no problem sleeping on the train in the mornings and, since it terminates at Waterloo, I never sleep through my stop.

This morning I was well away, dreaming of a world where fairies and pixies exist when I was suddenly ripped from such pleasant musings by the very loud strains of the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm. And when I say loud, it was pretty close to deafening.

I didn’t have time to be angry (it was my phone, after all) and made a grab for my top pocket to retrieve the phone. I don’t know about you but when I wake up suddenly, dexterity tends to make a belated entrance. I fumbled with the phone, trying to open the case (of course, each step I take makes the phone ring louder and the tune to start filling the carriage) mortified in case there was someone like me sitting near.

The thing with my phone is, in order to answer a call, I have to slide the green bar across the surface of the screen (I can hang up by sliding the red one in the opposite direction). Normally this is fine but not when I’ve just had my snooze shattered. I tried everything but all that happened was new screen came up over the top of the answer the phone one. This just meant my ability to answer the call was even more diminished.

Eventually I hit something which hung it up and the carriage was once more silent. The first thing I did was put it on silent. This is something I generally do every time I get on a train and I never get a call. I guess if I want a call, I should leave it on normal.

After a couple of minutes a message icon popped up saying I had a new message. It was a BT engineer telling me I was booked in for a visit on Monday. No time, nothing but that. Oh, and he said goodbye.

This started me thinking. I had assumed that when our Internet connection was restored last night that BT had figured out what they had broken and quickly fixed it, too embarrassed to call me straight away. Clearly this was not the case and the engineer had been ordered very quickly. Perhaps this was after my last tussle with them. I can see the screen now “If this guy rings, escalate him and send out an engineer – it’s not worth the hassle.” If this is the case, and I sincerely hope so, I might just stay with BT.

I thought about ringing back but it’s just too difficult without certain bits of paper in order to prove you are who you claim to be so I figured I’d leave it till tomorrow.

At work I enlarged quite a few records in the oil paintings group finding out more than I needed to about the Venezuelan national airline and Dr Ian Moore who would often “…dash off for a spot of fishing even in his advanced years.” My job is so diverse. That’s just one of the reasons why I love it.

In the afternoon I missed another BT call (the phone was still on silent) but couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It appeared to be someone apologising to me for not getting back to me but unfortunately nothing could be done and I should call them. It made no sense. I’m not sure why they bother leaving messages completely lacking in any form of intelligible communication. It wasn’t a language thing either. It just didn’t make any sense.

I can only wonder at how many messages there are waiting for me to get home.