Last night my next door neighbour dropped in with a phone message for me from Lucy. I was very surprised, not in the least because I rarely actually speak to Lucy (mainly our communication is via email) and if she needed my phone number surely one of our mutual friends would be approached before a neighbour. My neighbour and I had a quick chat about how strange it was, she passed Lucy’s phone number on to me and, noticing it was a Queensland number and not the NSW number I have for Lucy, I gave it a call thinking perhaps she’s moved.
All I got was an answering machine telling me to call back during business hours. Strange, but okay, maybe Lucy had called from work for some reason.
Not ten minutes later the neighbour from the other side came by. Lucy had left a message on her answering machine. Lucy’s trying to contact us, she knows we live next door, could somebody call her back and give her our phone number. I went in and listened to the voice on her answering machine. Lucy has a distinct New Zealand accent. She is not the Lucy I know.
I later confirmed this by calling my friend Lucy just to check. We had a lovely catch up chat-Hi Lucy!
We are all now curious as to why somebody would go to the trouble of finding out my neighbours’ numbers when trying to contact me. Our phone numbers are not similar so Lucy couldn’t have misdialled a digit and serendipitously ended up speaking to my neighbours. Our surnames don’t begin with the same letter, let alone having the same name, so she couldn’t have been trawling the phone book for us and called the right name, wrong street address.
Whoever it is had to make a real effort to contact my neighbours. If you know a name and address (as this person does) then obtaining a phone number isn’t hard. It’s not like it’s a state secret or anything.
Unlike trying to find out who Lucy is via the number she left me-apparently that’s illegal in Australia (damn those privacy laws!).
So, Lucy (no surname) if you’re out there, I won’t be calling Queensland again. If you really want to contact us, you have a name and address, might I suggest the quaint, old fashioned, traditional letter or if times are desperate-a telegram.
