Our home Villa Roquette is a big house, but not a vast palace, so why does the phone stop ringing the moment I get to it?
My dislike for telephones is increased every time I rush to the room where a phone handset has been left from the last time it was used, only for it to quit ringing the moment I find it. I have noticed that the number of rings people wait on has dropped dramatically in the last couple of years.
The rare times I call someone I wait 12 rings, if no answer I hang up and call again for 12 rings. But I just missed the last call to me after five rings from the caller (the phone was in my hand at that moment) and no second call. I had to run down three flights of stairs so 5 rings was fast moving, the wretched phone is now on my desk smirking at me.
Is this impatience the result of mobile phones where the phone is usually picked up in a couple of rings – except for my wife who has the phone in her handbag which has six million pockets and the caller always ends before she has found it – but then there is a message or something telling her who called so she calls back.
I know phones have features which can tell me who called, or take messages, whatever, but this phone is about the 90th model we have had in the last five years, all have different programs and I have a big cardboard box full of not-working handsets, instructions which bear no relation to the phone and bits of wire with enough plugs to fix the Hadron accelerator thing. So I just want a phone to pick up.
If you have the solution to this please call me – or much better, email me 