‘You
have one new message,’ it told me.
I opened it.
Congratulations on claiming your welcome prize. You are entitled to
three wishes. Text your first wish to 3333.’
I stifled a laugh. This was the scam of all scams.
Yet there were no customers around, so where was the harm?
Not wanting to go for the obvious ‘million pounds in my bank
account’ routine – after all, there was without doubt
somebody at the other end having quite a laugh at my expense –
I decided to make my first wish unusual, and it was an old phone advert
that inspired me.
‘I wish,’ I typed, ‘I could speak 2 any1 from history.’
Then I sent the message to 3333.
No sooner had the ‘message sent’ window appeared, when
the phone rang, its shrill tone shattering the silence.
I pressed the ‘answer call’ button and was greeted by
a woman’s voice.
‘Universal Directory Enquiries,’ she said. ‘To whom
would you like to speak?’
I was silent.
She repeated the question.
Surely this was a joke gone too far. But what did I have to lose by
playing along with it? The problem was I just couldn’t think
who to ask for. In the end, with the person who brought the phone
in the day before in mind, I suggested Alexander Graham himself.
‘Connecting, please hold.’ |
A few
seconds passed, silent but for the repressed hiss of static. Then
I nearly dropped the phone onto the floor with the almighty noise
that assaulted my ear.
I could just make out a voice, although it sounded as though someone
was shouting to me from the inside of a washing machine.
‘Mister Watson,’ I was sure I heard him say. ‘Come
here, I want you!’
Then a click and all I could hear was the dialling tone.
Obviously a wrong number, so I closed the call.
Another text message: ‘You have two wishes left. Send your
second wish to 2222.’
If this was a wind-up, and I was sure it was, it was a well contrived.
I even checked the shop for hidden cameras, before realising that
the shelves were full of them: in the shape of phones that were
capable of image capture.
I took the phone into the one room that I believed still offered
privacy.
Lowering the lid, I sat with my back resting on the cistern, working
out how my second wish could catch out the perpetrators of this
farce.
I began typing. ‘I would like 2 see what’s behind these
messages,’ sending it to 2222.
Then… nothing. What did I really expect? Jeremy Beadle appearing
from the porcelain beneath me? Noel Edmonds popping his head out
from the cistern? Or the voice of Harry Hill with one of his ‘You’ve
Been Framed’ one-liners? |
