Hanging on the telephone

Today started much too early, with a 5:30am conference call. That would have been bad enough by itself, but when it was cancelled at 5:40am I was put into a really black mood. I went back to sleep until an alarm woke me for my next conference call, at 6:30am. And that one was cancelled too.

At least the second call was cancelled five minutes before it was meant to start, rather than ten minutes afterwards. I still had sleep cruelly swiped from me, but I didn't have to seethe through the never-ending plinky-plonky rendition of Greensleeves that you're tortured with before the call commences. I went back to sleep again, craving some rest before the third call, at 7:30am.

At least this call happened. If I'd been bowled a turkey of struck-out appointments, I might very well have thrown my Blackberry out of the window, with terrible consequences for any innocent pedestrians on the street below us. And I wouldn't have been able to phone for an ambulance for them. Oh, the [potential] irony.

Phone call number 4 was a rematch of phone call number 2, and involved a man telling me things very slowly, which is torture to me. I need a high rate of data, not one word-per-minute explanations of what's going on. At least it was straight after the third call, so I didn't feel I was just dangling at the end of a telephone line, waiting for the world to pay me some attention.

Phone call 5 was for 10:30, but, oh! blessed relief! it was put back by two hours with two hours notice, so I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to claw back some of my desperately dreamed of sleep.

I think it was about then that the pneumatic drills started up. Did I do something bad in a past life?