They've got my number

A couple of weeks ago I started getting calls and messages on my phone from a number I didn’t know. The messages were in French teenage-speak asking me who I was. I don’t answer calls from anyone I don’t know. Anyway, I took advantage of my big tall strong son with a deep voice being home and asked him to answer the phone.

 It turned out that my phone number was on the toilet wall at a school somewhere we’ve never heard of in France. After talking to Olivier they stopped phoning and sending messages. Hopefully I’ve been scribbled out.

He might just be right.

Look below at the post “When did the change over happen?”.

Since the beginning of December I thought that I was suffering on and off with a mild case of cystitis. It turns out that my bladder is having spasms. While doing research, I discovered some websites that hinted that this problem could be due to keeping your phone in your pocket. My phone is definitely out of my pocket for the time being. I have tablets to take too, hopefully it will get better soon.

Note to self: Listen when son speaks…

To go with the post about telephones

When did the change over happen?

Olivier hates it when I use words like Gr8 or U R for 'you are' when I send him texts.  He tells me that I must use correct English and no wonder standards of writing are dropping bla, bla, bla.  Over Christmas he advised me not to keep my phone in my jeans pocket.  I answered that I wasn't worried about fertility problems at my time of life.  He then went on about no one knows the long term effects bla, bla, bla.  I'm supposed to be the sensible one, When did we change over rolls?

Phnd md qtuhgick!

The ‘good’ start to last week continued: On Tuesday, the Renault 5 needed to go to the garage for a service. I don’t know the way there so Rob said ‘Follow me’. It worked really well until I had to wait for 10 cars to go by before changing roads. We hadn’t discussed where I should head for if he went too far ahead. No signposts to the part of town where the garage is. I pulled in it call Rob, but it didn’t help me much as I didn’t know where I was. He advised me to head into town and go to the garage from there (I know that route).

So I was in the middle of town in heavy traffic slowing down and the car stalled. I kept calm, turned everything off, put on the hazard lights and checked that the car was out of gear ready to start up again. The car refused to start. With a lot of impatient drivers whizzing round I started to panic. A nice young man offered to push me onto the kerb, which just happened to be an empty parking space. I was so grateful. He then ran off to help a young woman who had fallen over (‘Tomorrow’s News’ or a Guardian Angel ?). With shaking hands I sent Rob a text message, the title of this post is what I wrote. He realized something was wrong and phoned me back straight away from the garage. The garage manager has been looking after us for 25 years now, so he listened over the phone while I tried to start the car again.

They both came to rescue me and our garage man replaced the spark plugs and took the car off to service. When we collected it the following day he presented us with the bill – no charge for coming out to fetch the car.

It does pay to build a good relationship with your local garage, even if you don’t know where it is. Unfortunately he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.

I can dream

I got to have a go with Olivier’s Blackberry. We were coming home after taking him to his lift to go back to Poitiers early on Monday morning. We could hear music and as a car was overtaking us at the time thought that they had their music turned up loud. A second car overtook with it’s music, the same music, playing loudly. I assumed they were listening to the same radio station. Then the music played again. Olivier was phoning us (his phone) with his friend’s phone to tell us that he’d left the blackberry on the back seat. We had to turn around and go back to the pick up point. Fortunately they had only lost 10 minutes. They both had lectures at 10.15.

I expect that’s the closest I’ll get to using his phone.

On the subject of families

Try to imagine having a telephone conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language and you don’t speak theirs. Now imagine this ‘conversation’ lasting for 17 minutes. One of Rob’s Norwegian cousins phoned the other day. She phones about twice a year and I always seem to be the one who draws the short straw. I’m not completely speechless in Norwegian I can say ‘I don’t speak Norwegian’. Unfortunately, she seems to think that if she speaks to me long enough I’ll be able to understand (a bit like how babies learn). I’m too polite to hang up, after all she is family. Oh well at least I know I’ve got about five and a half months until the next call…