One New Voicemail Message

I wish people wouldn't leave messages on my voicemail. It wouldn't be a problem if I was a dilligent and organized person, but... oh well.

I hate having the little icon on the phone screen that indicates a new voicemail message. That's fine assuming that I can immediately check it and get rid of that icon. This time, though, I had only twelve pence of credit, and calls to that voicemail aren't cheap. In a bold attempt to shortcut the process, I put in my PIN, 'hash-key', then the number that I thought would be "to listen to your messages". Something went wrong though, because I was now in some dark and moist crevice of the conversation tree. "To renew your maritime licence, press one. For colonic cancers, press the epsilon key". And so on. I hung up and started again, but the robotic operator hadn't even got past the stage of telling me how convenient it is to top-up with a credit card before we cut out. I might have managed to delete it, had I not had text messages every ten seconds to warn me that my credit was running out.

Driven to madness by the little envelope-with-a-casette-tape icon, I walked to the nearest cash machines. Ten minutes up the road, there was a queue for the machines which, when I got there, had lots of buttons next to "sorry, service not availble" with nothing but 'withdraw cash' and 'print receipt' availble. So, no luck there.

I also wanted to buy a quiche. It wasn't a matter of "Since I've walked a quarter-mile I may as well get a quiche while I'm up here". It was more a case of There's a incon on my phone screen, and I needed a quiche just to take the edge off.

Maybe my ability to scan shelves was sapped, but I tell you what: Tesco doesn't sell quiche.

Well, it was a bad day. Since then, though, I've finished term and thus, now have a little more free time. To paraphrase Holkins, there's nothing wrong with a man that Knights of the Old Republic can't cure.

This is the Broadhurst theatre