Banana Phone

The phone doesn't ring much in this house, especially during the day. Hubby rings in the morning to let me know he hasn't fallen off his bike or under a bus, and again at lunchtime because, well just because. He calls me when he is leaving work so that a) if he is getting the train I can go pick him up from the station, b) if he's on his bike I know when to start panicking and calling local hospital and c) under either scenario, I can get the dinner on.

Lately, however, I've been getting lots of scam phone calls. At least once a day. We have caller id on our phone so I can usually see the number of the person calling. When the number is listed as 'International', I know what's coming next. First it was the people telling me they were calling from the UK government and I had been awarded a grant for something or other. Purr-lease. Do these people not see the news? The UK government ain't giving no money to no one right now, or for the foreseeable future. They certainly aren't going to be chasing me to make sure I get what I'm owed (which is, of course, precisely nothing).

And then today there was the call apparently from Sky. 'Can you confirm that you are a Sky customer?' the lady asked. Well yeah, along with about half the population. 'What type of Sky box do you have?' Okay, these scammers really aren't trying hard enough. Sky know what boxes I have, they know which rooms they are in, hell, they probably know what I ate for dinner last night while goggling at their box. Note to scammers: not good enough. I hung up.

The other calls I get regularly aren't really scams, but they aren't quite kosher either. I have debt collection agencies calling me looking for a Jenny Someone-or-Other. I know the names of everyone who has lived in this house for the past twenty five years and there has never been a Jenny Anyone. So I tell them that, and then they want to know who I am and what the address is, which I tell them is none of their beeswax. What confuses me about this is that the calls keep coming, no matter how many times I tell them they have the wrong number. Are these people not working on commission? Why are they wasting their time calling numbers they know are wrong? Probably because the computer dials for them and they, the poor hapless souls, just get on with reading the script, their will to live diminishing just a little with every uttered syllable.

So if you are going to call me any time soon, make sure I know it's you, because otherwise I'm not picking up.  Or send me a text. I haven't had a scam text for, oh, at least a month.

Oh yeah, and the plant in the picture? It's called Honesty.