The To Do List

The last couple of days have been spent doing something that I never do: answering the phone. I don’t know whether it’s a bloke thing or just a me thing but ever since I got married I simply gave up even registering that the home telephone was even ringing. I just tuned it out. The reason for this was (to my mind at least) quite logical: it was never for me. Every time I’d pick up the phone and offer a chirpy hello there would be a short pause (to indicate severe disappointment) before the person at the other end of the line (normally my mother-in-law, my wife’s mates or someone calling from Kitchen’s Direct) would ask to speak to my wife. After a whole year of that kind of abuse (although now I think about it could well have been more a week and a half) I was sufficiently discouraged to give up answering the home phone forever. ‘Ha,’ I thought to myself. ‘From now on the only phone I’ll answer is my mobile one!’ And so that’s what I did for the next ten years until my wife’s moaning about how I never answer the phone reached critical mass one evening when she completely lost the plot at me just because she’d had to travel all the way from the loft to answer a phone in the living room that was ringing less than three feet away from my right hand.

The first call came at just after 7.30 a.m. on Saturday morning. Now rather than thinking to myself, ‘What kind of monster calls a human being at half seven in the morning?’ instead I leapt out of the shower (that’s right I was in the shower), grabbed a towel and raced downstairs to answer the phone.

Me: Hello?
My Mother-in-law: Oh, that’s strange! You don’t normally answer the phone. Nothing’s wrong is it? It’s not the kids is it? They’re not ill are they? Or is it Claire? She’s all right isn’t she? Although she did have that cold didn’t she? Colds can be nasty…especially this time of year. My old next door but one neighbour—back when we lived on Sanderson Street—well auntie…or it may well have been a cousin died from a nasty cold…although it was spring when it happened which I know isn’t technically winter but y’know…still it is dangerous.
Me [Shivering]: Claire’s fine. I’m just answering the phone because Claire says I never answer the phone. I’ll go and get her for you.
My Mother-in-law: Oh no, don’t bother, I’ll speak to her later.
Me: Later?
My Mother-in-law: Yes, later.
Me: If you can speak to her later then why are you phoning her now?
My Mother-in-law: In case she was passing by the phone.
Me: You called on the off chance that she might be passing the phone?’
My Mother-in-law: Well you never know do you?
Me: But what if she isn’t passing a phone?
My Mother-in-law: Then she won’t answer it will she?
Me: So basically what you’re saying is that you regularly dial our number with nothing to say based on the statistical likelihood of your daughter being in the vicinity of a phone?
My Mother-in-law: You’re in one of your funny mood again. Tell Claire I’ll call back.

And this, ladies and gentleman, illustrates with perfect alacrity the reason why once January is over I will no longer be answering my home telephone.