(the scene of the non-crime)
Every now and then, I do something spectacularly stupid, and today was a corker.
Anyway, these stories always start with me feeling happy, complacent and in control. I had a pleasant journey on the bus, chatting to V and stroking the crap guide dog with my feet, remembering to cough and fidget as often as possible to remind V I was there (I don’t think she ever figured out that I was still on the bus that time) When I got to town, I settled on a step outside the wi-fi centre (which had closed half an hour early just because they can) did some searches for my feature and chatted to my friend. As lunch loomed, I did one more round of the market then went to the Christina Aguilera café and ordered a salad. It had just turned up, and looked delicious, when I suddenly thought…. Hmm, when did I last see my mobile phone?
I’d left it on the steps of the wi-fi centre.
Frantically, I set up Skype and phoned it – it rang once and went straight to answerphone. I felt sick. Someone had picked it up – someone who didn’t want to speak to me. My mind filled up with panicky calculations about how long it would take me to get another phone, how much it would cost me. All the calls to Australia the phone stealing bastard must be making. Everyone in the café started fussing around me, giving me their own phones to use to call mine or to cut it off, muttering darkly about how you could't trust anyone these days and how all kinds of dodgy types hung around the wi-fi centre.
Then my Skype rang. It was the phone stealing bastard!
“Where are you?” he said. “I’ll bring your phone back to you.”
God, the relief. Me and Niccolo, a random café customer who’d decided to make sure phone stealing bastard wasn’t phone stealing rapist, met him under the equestrian statue in Piazza Cavalli. He refused all reward and seemed a genuinely nice bloke. I returned to the café, and a big cheer went up as I held my phone aloft.
He hadn’t made a single call – the only thing he’d done is changed my wallpaper photo to one of a row of beach huts. His reasons for doing this remain a mystery but I’ll keep it that way from now on, as a tribute to the kindness of strangers, and to remind me to be less crap in future.
Restores your faith in human nature doesn't it. I did a foolish thing this week. My mother wanted a pay as you go mobile for her birthday. Rather than waste money on a new crappish one, I gave her my old one. A Nokia N95 in full working order. I had it revamped with a new case in shining Barbie pink and a new Three payg sim card which I topped up with £10 of credit which came with 300 free texts. I still had the box with all the accoutrements untouched so that it was like a brand new phone. I remembered to remove the most unsavoury pictures and my various contacts. Not being too technically savvy she had me instruct her on the workings of it.
ReplyDeleteNow, here comes the alarming part - she has finally figured out how to send and receive text messages. I received this one an hour or so ago - "Scott, I have loads of your old messages on my phone - shall I try to delete them?"...