Love my phobile moan

I once overheard a conversation from a motorist broken down on the motorway. He was trying to report a vehicle breakdown from a Motorway phone box and clearly under stress.

Operator : "Your location please?"

Driver : "In the roadworks just after junction 12 - there's loads of traffic and it's very close to us.."

Operator :" Be with you soon sir - can you give me a phone number just to keep you informed?"

Driver : " Ah!!!! Can't remember it - Tracey! Tracey!..what's my phobile moan number?.. Oh xxxx"

I use a limited number of functions on my mobile - just calls and slow texts really. That was before I was given a course of tablets to take for the next 6 months, every day at the same time. The trick to remembering tablets  is to use alarms when I'm at home - so I set the small radio signal driven clock for 6.00 pm - repeating every 10 minutes. As a back-up I also decided to set the alarm on my mobile phone using a carefully chosen tone which increased in volume until acknowledged, also repeating every 10 minutes unless switched off.

This has worked very well for me, but has triggered an unusually frantic reaction from my wife - who is often cooking around 6.00 and well within range of both phone and clock.

Things began to go "pear-shaped" when I lost my phone. Several days later I happened to be in a meeting and mentioned the loss. Two members of the choir committee looked at each other and asked for a description of a phone that had been going off repeatedly in church during a choir practice - a phone that had been switched off and left in the safe.

30 seconds before our Sunday concert performance, as we walked to our places I was handed my phone. I checked the credit but saw a message "Sim card failure". "Fine"  I thought, and switched off the phone.

About halfway through our rendition of "Sister Mary had but one child" a mobile phone alarm went off - getting increasingly louder. I looked at my neighbour pointedly and the row of ladies in front began to either glare or giggle. It took a good 10 seconds (or 5 lines of the carol) for the penny to drop - at which point I decided to bluff whilst singing with as straight a face as possible and carefully pressing buttons on the phone in my pocket.

We sat down at the end of the carol. Then I gave the game away. Having realised the alarm would repeat during the next carol - Silent Night - I decided to turn the alarm off completely.

Having switched on the phone I was rewarded by the familiar switch on Nokia theme tune - followed rapidly by a lot of accusing looks, and quite a few moans...