Lost

Maybe my mind is going, but I’m sure that there used to be a special freephone number you could call on your mobile in the 1980s/90s so that you could properly discharge your battery. The call would connect, nothing would happen and when your battery was fully discharged you could plug in its freezer-sized charger and charge it up for a full four and a half minutes talktime.

Nowadays, this service has been replaced by Orange’s 150 Customer Service number.

You do get music (of a sort) and a voice on a loop telling you that your call is important but everyone is currently doing something lots more important. Sitting with the mobile on loudspeaker today, it reminded me powerfully of the looping French distress call in the pilot of “Lost” (“Your call is important to us …Iteration 7294531… Your call is important to us …Iteration 7294532 …”).

And then after 20 minutes it cut me off.

I allowed myself 5 seconds to let the anger possess me and then used my inside knowledge of call centres. I called Billing - who are usually delighted to have someone on the line who is not yelling at them because the bill is wrong. The guy there put me straight through to someone who solved my problem in two minutes. Nice Save.

I got the boxed set of "Lost" Series 1 from a charity shop the other day and I urge any of the remaining half-dozen or so people in the world who haven't seen it to see it. Mrs. Stan needs to hide in a Sudoku book when it gets scary, but otherwise we're loving it.