I'm home alone this week. The journalist called from a payphone because she's tutoring on a residential course in Shropshire where there is no reception for the mobile. “If the pips go call me back” she said. It was unintentionally romantic.

I was a teenager saying “when the pips go call me back”. The pips duly went and I pretended to talk while holding the receiver down with my hand. As soon as it rang I picked it up and we'd talk till the square windows of the red phone box steamed up.

Back in real time the pips really went and the journalist disappeared. I looked at my cell phone for the received number and all it said was Blocked.