Not of this world

I was alone in the house the other day and a bright and chirpy chap on the other end of the line said “Why hello Bob, it’s Eric here from Whoosh telecoms”. The Conversation continued . . .
B. Err, hi?
E. Which provider are you with, let me guess . . . Vodafone? Whoosh can cut you a deal for €27.99 a month all in: landline, mobile, data.
B. Vodafone? I don’t know, I don’t think so.
E. Well, who do you pay the bills to?
B. I don’t know, I don’t pay the bills.
By now, Eric is convinced that he’s talking to someone who is a bit slow, rather than someone who makes 3 telephone calls a year, and is in a hurry to close the telecon down to get on to his next mark.
E. Thank you for your time, Bob, have a nice day
. . . brrrrrrrr.

It’s like I say, I don’t use the telephone much but I do own a mobile since the days when I was commuting home from Dublin at the end of a working week. Friday evening traffic out of Dublin was so unreliable that it was impossible to predict when I’d arrive at the bus stop “near” home to get picked up. A txt or a call from Castledermott, 25 minutes to destination, meant that herself and myself could coincide +/- 5 minutes. That was an efficient use of mobile teleccoms. I buy €20 worth of calls when Vodafone tells me they’ll give me extra €redit if I do this. That much tends to last me about six months. I’m not really helping to float the telecoms bubble, and it’s only partly because I’m 'near' with money.

Talking of my old bicycle and commuting to work in the days before we bought a car reminded me of using that old black war-horse to take the laundry to the laundrette in those days before we owned a clothes washing machine. I made a huge laundry-bag by folding a nice piece of chequered cloth in half and sewing up two of the three sides. When full this became a fat sausage which could be slung across the carrier of my push-bike and, barely, not scrape along the roadway on either side. One Saturday I had a particularly large consignment to process and dithered about whether I should do it in two machines or one. Being near, I went with the cheaper option – naturally. When the load was finished there were items of clothing in there that, far from being properly washed, were not even wet – the machine was that tightly packed. Really, I haven't a clue and it shows.