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Phone Weirdness

Our house phone gets a lot of nuisance/spam calls. I check them on WhoCalledMe.

The numbers are usually either withheld (so sometimes possibly overseas) or apparently from British landlines.

However, our house phone records most withheld numbers on its 'received calls' list so I can look them up.

I pick up the phone and look at the display. If the number is unfamiliar I don't hit 'talk', answer, just give it a minute and listen for a message. If we get one it's often spam.
This is my technique. I don't answer numbers I don't recognise (or aren't programmed into my phone). If it's REALLY important (sometimes work colleagues call from their home phones which I don't have in my phone) they will, inevitably, follow up with a text or call back five minutes later. Then I pick up. But I've trained even my kids to text me first, I'd rather have information in the form of a text I can check back for details, than a five minute conversation, held when I'm busy, that consists of 'all right if we pop over for lunch on Sunday, we'll be there at eleven,' that I will, inevitably, almost instantly forget about.
 
More weirdness today.
I went to Peterborough to meet a friend. When I came back, there were 2 messages on my answering machine.
The first was a spooky recording with no voice, but lots of crackling and static. It went on and on.
The 2nd was from my friend Brian, a few minutes after the first.
I've been having a lot of noises on the line like this whenever I phone my Mum. It's really quite unnerving.
When I phoned Mum later, no noises on the line. It's almost like I'd been given my ration of weirdness earlier.
 
More weirdness today.
I went to Peterborough to meet a friend. When I came back, there were 2 messages on my answering machine.
The first was a spooky recording with no voice, but lots of crackling and static. It went on and on.
The 2nd was from my friend Brian, a few minutes after the first.
I've been having a lot of noises on the line like this whenever I phone my Mum. It's really quite unnerving.
When I phoned Mum later, no noises on the line. It's almost like I'd been given my ration of weirdness earlier.

Was the previous call Brian attempting to get through?

A few days ago I received a text but felt the vibration in the trouser pocket that my was not in, which was very odd. I guess that's a tactile hallucination of sorts?
 
It’s called Phantom Vibration Syndrome and it’s fairly common.

Isn't that when you feel a vibration, when there is none? I've experienced this several times, this was similar but different: I felt the vibration but in the wrong place.
 
Ogreds tale reminds me of an embarrassing moment from my younger days. As a keen youngish female in a mans world I had trouser suits, adapted with an inner pocket for the cadet of the day- mobile phone.

Unaware of the vibrate function when on silent, I gave lift shareing Middle manger gent the eyeballing of his life because I thought he had goosed me as I reached for the floor buttons..............
 
Around 10 years ago I took a photo of our old dog doing something daft at home and sent it to Mrs Floyd at work, (this is before smartphones). She phoned me up straight away to ask, quite angrily, who I was with. I asked what she meant and she said that someone had just sent her a photo of our dog.
Puzzled, I explained it was I who had sent said photo. She said it wasn't me and read the number to me. It was a landline number from a stud farm somewhere over Cambridge way.
 
Around 10 years ago I took a photo of our old dog doing something daft at home and sent it to Mrs Floyd at work, (this is before smartphones). She phoned me up straight away to ask, quite angrily, who I was with. I asked what she meant and she said that someone had just sent her a photo of our dog.
Puzzled, I explained it was I who had sent said photo. She said it wasn't me and read the number to me. It was a landline number from a stud farm somewhere over Cambridge way.
Phones, eh! :chuckle:
When you consider that people have been variously convicted or acquitted of crimes on the basis of where they were at the time according to phone records, your missis couldn't be blamed for being alarmed.

Couple of years ago I was in London for work but my Google Maps showed me nipping to a south coast caravan park for a half-hour quickie. :chuckle:
 
Phones, eh! :chuckle:
When you consider that people have been variously convicted or acquitted of crimes on the basis of where they were at the time according to phone records, your missis couldn't be blamed for being alarmed.

Couple of years ago I was in London for work but my Google Maps showed me nipping to a south coast caravan park for a half-hour quickie. :chuckle:
Yes! - It was very odd and she definitely did suspect yours truly of nefarious activity, for a brief while at least. It was made all the weirder by it being a landline though.
 
Ooh Ooh I have another one, again from a good few years ago; Got the phone bill (back in the ancient times of paper ones) and saw I'd been charged £4 for a 3 second call to a four figure number. I phoned up the phone company and the lady in Mumbai or wherever, said it was indeed correct. I pointed out that not only had I not called a four figure number, four figure numbers don't exist (phonewise). She said they do and that it was a satellite call. (She told me the name of the company and I looked it up- she was correct). I must have coincidentally dialled the four numbers while it was in my pocket. Thank the Lord the call didn't go on for any longer at those rates.
 
Nefarious activity? On a stud farm?

Did it cross her mind to hire you out? :chuckle:
Ha! No, the slight accusation that I was up to no good was before we found out where it had come from. The stud farm actually saved me, especially as it was in Wisbech (did I pronounce that correctly?), many miles away.
 
Ha! No, the slight accusation that I was up to no good was before we found out where it had come from. The stud farm actually saved me, especially as it was in Wisbech (did I pronounce that correctly?), many miles away.
I reckon your missis trusts you 100% but was confused about the message, and it came out as sounding like suspicion.

One time Techy's photo was snarfed off Facebook and added to a 'Hot Singles in YOUR area!' advert that was sent to someone we know.

Techy and I knew what must have gone on and found it hilarious. The lady it was sent to was mortified and apologised both privately and publicly on Facebook, to our further amusement. :chuckle:

It's so easy to get dropped in it, innit!
 
I reckon your missis trusts you 100% but was confused about the message, and it came out as sounding like suspicion.

One time Techy's photo was snarfed off Facebook and added to a 'Hot Singles in YOUR area!' advert that was sent to someone we know.

Techy and I knew what must have gone on and found it hilarious. The lady it was sent to was mortified and apologised both privately and publicly on Facebook, to our further amusement. :chuckle:

It's so easy to get dropped in it, innit!
Now that really could have ended up in the divorce courts!
 
Update on my phone weirdness:
I've almost stopped using my landline, because it is almost unusable. I bought a new phone to see if that would sort out the security issues - but it didn't.
For many of my calls, I'm using an expensive mobile phone (which I was reluctant to buy because of the cost).
I bought a new phone for my Mum (of the same type as I bought for my own landline). However, we are still getting lots of extraneous noises and other people's voices. So... now, by an expensive process of elimination, I have established that the problem is at my Mum's end, and whoever's hacking her phone isn't doing it over radio waves. It's the landline itself that is being hacked. :(

Criminals or MI5? MI5 would have more ability to do this without being stopped. If so...why is MI5 tapping my Mum's phone? It's bizarre. It's not like the old dear has anything interesting to say!
 
Criminals or MI5? MI5 would have more ability to do this without being stopped. If so...why is MI5 tapping my Mum's phone? It's bizarre. It's not like the old dear has anything interesting to say!
That's what you think. Can we ever truly know our parents? She may be a human Macavity for all you know!
 
I remember years ago walking past a phone box on a dark misty night and heard it ringing. Couldn't resist answering and on the other end of the line was a very loud recording of Shaddup Your Face.

Not exactly the chilling experience I had expected
 
I remember years ago walking past a phone box on a dark misty night and heard it ringing. Couldn't resist answering and on the other end of the line was a very loud recording of Shaddup Your Face.

Not exactly the chilling experience I had expected

It is if you're Midge Ure.
 
Hat-maker? That's obviously a cover story for some other job. ;)
Wasn't millinery a....ahem....cover in the past for....ahem....ladies of the night?

Rather like Terry Pratchett's seamstresses.
 
Not AFAIK.
Let's check with Merriam-Webster.
bawd, call girl, cocotte, courtesan, drab, hooker, hustler, sex worker, streetwalker, tart, whore
madam, madame
chippie (also chippy), doxy (also doxie), floozy (or floozie), tramp
hussy, jade, minx
coquette, flirt, libertine, siren, tempter, temptress, vamp, wench
woman of the street
 
Ahah....now I know why there is always a queue of blokes down our local chippie.
 
Wasn't millinery a....ahem....cover in the past for....ahem....ladies of the night?

Rather like Terry Pratchett's seamstresses.
We've had this discussion before.
My Mum worked at an established milliner in London until she got married and gave birth to my sister. Then she had to find work closer to home.
 
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