Dom Davis (The Blog)

For the past 4 years I’ve used my mobile as my primary telephone number. The land line is really just for broadband, although the mobile reception in Little Cottage is a bit crap so we have started encouraging people to call the landline if there’s no answer on the mobile. Even so I couldn’t really tell you what the ring on the home phone sounds like, I hear it so infrequently. Which is why, when it rings at 00:40 it’s causes such confusion.

Here’s the scene. The Zozo and I sound asleep with that serenity being shattered by a noise. A few seconds confusion while we try and work out what’s going on followed by me getting out if bed to pick up the phone. It’s dark and the handset doesn’t light up when you pick it up. I can’t find the answer button. The phone goes to voicemail. Now we’re both awake and wondering what’s wrong and who’s calling.

I turn my mobile on in case someone is trying to get hold if me. The Zozo does 1471. Number withheld. She checks the message. Nothing. It’s a fucking automated dialler. Some bastard machine has called our number so that, on the off chance that we answer and there is an ‘agent’ free, some Indian sat in a call centre half way round the world can try to sell me something I have no interest in buying.

Does it matter that were on the TPS scheme? Does it fuck! To report the company you need to get some details from them which the ‘agents’ have been trained not to give. It’s not “Hello this is Mahindra from Annoying Corp.”, it’s “Hello sir, let me feed you some shit about why you need to buy something from me”. With a withheld number you can’t report them.

I’ve even had them phone up claiming my computer has returned diagnostic information that it’s booting up too slowly. Utter shite, especially when the ‘agent’ couldn’t tell me the make or model of my computer. They wanted me to ‘click start’ and pass that info to them. Firstly, if it’s calling some remote helpdesk to say it’s got problems then you have that information and secondly it’s a Mac. There is no start button, so kindly fuck off! I did get him to admit that he couldn’t help me because I didn’t have a Windows machine and that my computer didn’t cause them to call but I never got the company name to complain about them.

So here we are. An hour later. It’s nearly two in the sodding morning and I can’t get back to sleep, all thanks to some stupid fucking sales company and their bloody auto dialler. I want to hurt someone¹!

¹Given the state of this country on how the authorities can blow the simplest figure of speech way out of proportion I should probably point out that this is just a statement of frustration and not a threat, implied or otherwise, against any person or persons, living or dead. Anyone taking it as such is hereby admitting that they are a moron of the highest caliber and unfit to make judgement against me.