The Phone Fear
Phone fear is the worst, but worse than phone fear – what I mean by ‘phone fear’ is when you are in a crowded public place and your phone rings and instead of answering it like a normal person you freeze up and start talking as if someone has a gun against your head – is people who have no phone fear; we’re talking yuppies, women working in Beauty PR, men in suits with far too much hair-gel and youngsters who have just discovered the joys of the mobile phone. Ugh.
The odd thing where my phone fear is concerned, though, is that I get it even when I’m out in the country and no-one is around. Take the other day for example, I was wandering around a nature reserve with only cows, sheep and a kestrel flying overhead for company when my phone rang–I picked it up and said “Yes, hello?” and as soon as I did so I became aware (or so my phone fear told me) that the cows were staring at me, the sheep were bahhing about my rudeness and the kestrel overhead was spying down at me with its beady little predatory eyes. And it got worse–
The more I tried to act normal, the more the cows made tiny grunting noises and the more tight and suspicious the kestrel’s circular flight became. In the end I had to cancel the call and it turned out to be the right decision because the animals reverted back to their harmless selves.
I will never answer my phone in front of a cow ever again.