Odd phone calls, selling stuff, weather alert!

The phone rings early on Saturday morning. I mean really early. It's still dark. Nor just a bit dark but pitch black still. If the phone rings at that time of day you expect it do be something important. So I stagger out of bed and down the stairs. "Hello," I say. Silence. "Hello?" Still silence. And once more, "Hello?!" Finally, a would-be sultry voice says, "Goodbye", slowly and almost like an insult. I dial 1471 to see if there's any clue as to who it was. The automated voice tells me, "Telephone number bla - bla- bla ( no number I recognise) called today at 6.46 am. Please hang up." No option to press 3 to return the call, which is what you usually get. No, simply, "Please hang up"! 

When I comment on this later to Phil, he tells me he has had that call before. How weird! Maybe there is a wake-up service, rather like your hotel reception giving you a wake-up call, that calls people's home phone numbers. Maybe they dialled the wrong number. Or maybe there's a loony out there who gets a strange thrill out of waking people early in the morning and confusing them. I doubt that I will ever find out. 

I spent a good part of yesterday helping my daughter sort out her younger kids' bedroom, putting together bags of rubbish, sets of toys that belong together, bags of toys that are no longer played with but can be sold or given away. It's amazing how much clutter two kids can accumulate. The enormous quantity of soft toys. And the incomprehensible collection of small plastic creatures, both realistic and fantasy. And how many notebooks one small girl can collect. I should not be surprised at this last one. She is clearly her mother's daughter, who is clearly my daughter. Is delight in stationery hereditary? Maybe even genetic? 

Later my daughter drove me home. It was dark again by now. Not that it had ever really been what you could properly call light. Mostly a thin, whitish grey cloud-covered day with intermittent sleety snow and hail showers. So we drove through the dark, over roads with a fresh fall of snow, looking for a particular house on a little back street where the street lighting was not good and the house numbers unclear. 

My daughter was selling some item on a local network for buying and selling stuff. These seem to have sprung up everywhere, taking over from e-bay within restricted areas. Much of the system depends on smartphones so that pictures of the items for sale can be broadcast around the network. Purchases are delivered or collected personally. No postage costs involved. The wonders of modern life! I must sort out saleable items from my cupboards and supplement my pension. 

Anyway, we drove several times round the snow filled crescent until we eventually found the house and went on our way. She dropped me off at home and set off for her own house once again, with admonitions to drive carefully in the continued nasty weather. 

When I got up this morning the world looked like this. 

 

Very pretty and very impractical. 

And as I write, the snow is falling again. Time to hibernate or emigrate, methinks!