Midnight Caller

Sometimes, if you're like me, you get ideas for things in the strangest places. Occasionally, something happens, and you think - I really must blog about that. But then, something else important distracts you (your baby is sick, the dinner's burning, Gladiators is on FTN) and you completely forget about it.

On some rare occasions, such ideas occur in the middle of the night. Normally, such times are a result of waking from a particularly unusual dream ("I know! I'll blog on Kermit the Frog riding a llama through my kitchen!"), but even if I do remember these in the morning, I soon realise that writing on such things would be a ridiculous idea, was really the result of being half asleep in the middle of the night, and would almost certainly lead to my being removed from my house under the mental health act.

But the other night, something did happen that I genuinely wanted to mention, and then genuinely forgot. We were having a difficult night with Lucy - she wasn't really sleeping. It was about 3 in the morning. The phone rang.

Now, when that happens it's always horrible. Who would ring now? Only someone with bad news. Good news can wait until the morning.

I have the dubious honour of having the phone on my side of the bed, and so I reluctantly answered it with a bleary "hello". I was careful to make the greeting as bleary-sounding as humanly possible, so whoever was disturbing me knew that they had awoken me. Even though that hadn't, really. Because we were struggling with Lucy.

"Hello", said the female voice on the other end, "Is that Tom?"

"What? Who's Tom?" I asked, blearyness deliberately increasing.

"Oh. Is Tom not there?"

"No. What?" (I added the "what" to really create the illusion of being half-asleep. I think it worked quite well).

"Dear, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry"

I had intended at this point to throw in another "what" for good measure, but she hung up, tail between her legs.

So, it was a wrong number. No bad news. Just a confused woman. I did go to sleep in the end, and promptly forget all about "Is that Tom" incident, and so I'm telling you now - three days later.

Have a good weekend. And if your name's Tom, I've got a call for you...