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Catie was taking Ernie to school in the car. Unusually I got a call from her phone about five minutes after they'd left. I thought maybe Ernie had left his violin behind or I had some chore to fulfil.
"Hello" I offered.
Then Ernie said "Ha ha! This is a prank call," laughed and hung up.
I wish more prank calls would be up front about what they are. I had certainly been pranked good and proper. I felt like a fool.
Ernie rang back a few minutes later and I thought it would be another prank call. Once bitten, twice shy. But he was straight in with "This is not a prank call." Hold on, was this the prank? He was saying it wasn't, but maybe he was pranking me. It wasn't really his modus operandi. So far his prank calls have announced themselves right up front. Were they getting more sophisticated.
No, this wasn't a prank call. He was ringing to tell me that his mum had been laughing for a full two minutes at his original prank call. She was still laughing now.
That was a nice start to the day.
He's getting into prank calling early. I was a teenager before I really entered that phase. In the days when everyone's name and number was in a book in the telephone booth my friends and I looked through for people with funny names. We found someone whose name was A Belcher and rang up and my friend Steve said "Hello, can I speak to a belcher?"
The woman seemed confused and he had to repeat it.
"Oh, you mean Andy," she said and went to get him.
"Is that a Belcher," asked Steve as the rest of us laughed at our amazing joke.
"Oh very funny," said A Belcher (quite sarcastically I thought, especially given how funny this was) and then hung up on us. What a triumph for comedy.
We had to make our own entertainment in those days.
A really excellent conversation with the remarkable Matt King who has had a terrible year, but is making a remarkable recovery and has also written an excellent memoir of his Peep Show character Superhans.
