i’m no good at distinguishing voices on the phone even when they are ones i know really well and when i talk to my brother on the phone these days he sounds dead like my dad. which amuses me and probably doesn’t amuse him.

the other day i was using the answering service on my mobile phone and picked up a message from my boyfriend. ‘blah di blah di blah, dial hash to call the call return number’ said the answering machine woman. i dialed hash. the phone at the other end rang.

then my mum came on the line telling me she wasn’t there. ‘useless answering thingy’ i thought, ‘it’s dialed the number from the wrong message.’ then it dawned on me that it wasn’t my boyfriend’s mobile, and it wasn’t my mum’s recorded message, he’d called from home and it was my own voice on the answering machine.