Telephone Service

The ad says: No need to talk. Live call, just listen.

Mobile Phone Baby

You cannot compete for attention with a mobile phone baby when it rings.

Doula

Complimentary medicines: telephone sex and mystic birthing.

Technomystic

Divining the future with a broadband connection.

Breakfast

Sometimes it is simply too early to converse.

Sleep Talk

A one-way conversation in the quiet still hours before dawn.

Stupid Clock

Friday listens to the speaking clock.

She has a project: understand the dynamic voice qualities of a speaker – intonation, rhythm, fluency and speed – understand the speaker. Everyone is on a vibrating line into the their own future, and all futures are connected. The better you understand a person, the clearer their connection to their future, and to yours.

The problem is this: most people are complex. Not easy to know. Coloured by their experiences, their different personas, their agreements with themselves and the world. Friday knows her lover better than anybody – they have been intertwined some eight years. Yet even Owen’s line-to-the-future is clouded with uncertainty. Wreathed in a mist of contradiction and doubt.

So Friday has a theory: That woman, Sarah Mendes da Costa, recorded the speaking clock without doubt or uncertainty. She was focused on an emotionally consistent monologue. At that point in time, if you knew her well and had the gift, you should be able to see her line-to-the-future, and therefore yours. So Friday spends many free hours listening to the speaking clock, hoping to understand the voice and divine the future. It would be a technopaganic breakthrough.

Owen thinks: it’s just a stupid clock.

Black Tape

I do my research. I anticipate and analyse. I reflect. To provide the best service, I like to get into the psyche of my callers. My patients, as I think of them.

They don’t speak – that’s my speciality – so I have to develop some sense of them. Something tangible to play with. I have to give them a stimulus that I can work with, that they can get off to. Something that will make them call back, again and again. They like to imagine this is all about me. I encourage that, but of course this is about them. They simply transfer. I am the vehicle, the proxy.

There is this one caller. He is French-Canadian, his name is Charlie. (A psuedonym, of course. He is a famous writer and I’m not about to give away his identity. My service is discreet). Charlie’s got a thing about food. Specifically, wheat  products. Bread, bagels, muffins, cakes, cereals. Biscuits. I talk a lot about crumbs and flakes on my clothing. On Thursdays – that’s his day – I buy something from the supermarket that’s in the reduction section. It gives the business an air of chance. The cheapest wheat product available that is about to expire its ‘Best Before’. Use By: tonight – when Charlie calls. Last week he got a cinnamon bagel. Easy. Focus on the ring. Week before, jam tarts. Focus on sticky. One time, all they had was wheat-free pasta. I could’ve lied but I thought, it’s a challenge. Luckily it was penne. Charlie was happy enough.

The regular from Stockport loves tennis equipment. For him, brands are the thing. Dunlop, Adidas, Fred Perry. Fila. I have a caller from somewhere in the Carib, straightforward bondage. His name is Teddy, and teddy likes to be tied. Tied and punished. Poodle is a dog/scat fetishist. Anon from Cork, its bakelite products. Then there is Bill, a Manxman. He likes me to steal things, every Tuesday. That does it for him. So I’m in this art centre last Tuesday afternoon, and I see a roll of black gaffer tape lying unattended, and I think, Bill from Manx. And I also think, Teddy. Two birds, one stone.