Vodafone makes the Mounties look like slackers

If you've been wondering where I've been, and why this blog hasn't been updated in the past three years, I've been hiding from Vodafone.

I don't know when I first made it to their Most Wanted list.  I have had two pay-as-you-go mobile phone accounts with them for years now (although the first one lapsed, and will probably now go straight to Hell as a result).  They always respect the "Do Not Contact Me With Offers If You Want to Live" box when I tick it.  But, apparently, not any more.

The first call came when Herself and I were in a state over the dog.  He had some issues that required the services of a burly man and a heavy pliers.  As a result, any phone calls received unexpectedly in the middle of the day could mean the dog had lost a limb, or put a man's eye out, or even eaten an Alsatian whole.  Well, he is a Jack Russell terrier, after all.

Then the new-phone debacle coincided.  This was the changeover from our much beloved small outdated brick phones to a pair of super slippery newfangled types that require the dexterity of a ninja on cocaine to operate.  My pocket began making strange susurrating noises that I finally figured out was a ring tone.  By the time the bar of soap I'd been told was a phone was in my hand and the right way up the caller had given up.  I recognised a Vodafone Customer Care number in the missed calls register.

The next call came during a meeting at work.  I hammered the device off a colleague until both fell silent.  But it's no use.  The damnable thing continues to haunt me.  And always at the most inopportune time.

This evening while gaining the moral higher ground of dragging an unclaimed change ticket out of the ticket machine on the bus, Vodafone rang again.  I tore the change ticket in halves in my red-mist rage and stood looking dumbly at the driver as he wondered why I was not pulling the now mangled journey ticket from the machine.  I grabbed the shreds and went back for the change ticket after all and sat down.  Vodafone again.

Because I'm not going to answer you at work, while berating a customer for being a customer, nor in the toilet, while chinning my phone out of my trouser pocket as my two hands wave under the drier, nor even when I am made to sit bolt upright in bed like a human right-angle, Vodafone, please stop ringing me.

It's your own time you're wasting.