MELLIPOP IS SCREENING TONIGHT

Ok, so Anton is working late tonight, I've had the day off with the flu and we really need to get an answering machine. I’m screening tonight, see.

I'm a big fan of screening. Generally I screen phone calls to avoid facing one of two things 1) My parents 2) Anton's parents.

I can say this without fear of recourse, because no-one in Anton’s hemisphere of our combined “Circle of Love (and Obligation)” actually read Mellipop. I think he is simply far too embarrassed by me to expose them to the dubious inner workings of my psyche. Fair enough. They probably already think I’m strange enough as it is. Plus, his family don’t cuss half as much as mine does. We’re foul-mouthed butcher-folk from Blacktown.

My parents already know and understand that I am a moody bitch, capable of erratic moments of vivacious chattiness alternating with episodes of sullen withdrawal. It’s a phone-call crap-shoot, and they know it. They usually prefer to speak with Anton anyway. He’s always predictably upbeat and polite. Mr Mono-Mood.

Anyway, as with regards to this evening, the problem is that the essential nature of screening has as its central concern, the act of identifying the caller first, then deciding whether or not you actually wish to speak with them.

Without an answering machine, screening, for the most part, is completely ineffectual, and begins to rely more on the principles of pure risk rather than calculated risk.

Do I pick up the phone call and risk having to make inane small-talk with the in-laws in Anton’s absence, or do I elect to take the soft option of Star 10 Hash to minimise that risk? Now Star 10 Hash, is not without its problems either. The only phone number I actually have committed to memory is that of my parents, and that is surely only because it was also my phone number until I hit the age of 19.

So the only callers I can successfully screen are my parents. Any other number simply leaves me mystified, no clearer as to who wished to speak with me and why. So then I start to feel guilty, wondering whether maybe someone has been in an accident, or has died. Or maybe a good mate has just broken up with someone and needs a friendly shoulder to cry on. And here I am screening them. What kind of horrible person does that make me?

Truth be told, I hate talking on the phone, though the irony is that my parents were completely frustrated by their failed attempts to wrench me away from the darn thing for five long years between the ages of 13 and 18. I’d much prefer to talk over a schooner in a quiet beer garden somewhere.

Friends and family members all attest to the same frustration at trying to call me on my mobile phone. Having loudly resisted getting one of the bloody things for years, its prime function these days is as an over-priced push-button paperweight on my desk.

The “mobile” aspect of my phone is generally neutered by a lack of credit, battery power or the simple failure to carry it with me on my person. Plus, I don’t have emergencies. Being 15 minutes late to meet with someone does not classify as an emergency. I’m always on time. I sincerely believe that other people use their mobile phone as a handy excuse to be tardy. It is simply called being “rude” or “inconsiderate”, regardless of whether or not you phone ahead to explain that you haven’t had the courtesy to make any attempts at punctuality.

So to assuage my guilt at refusing to pick up the phone tonight, I have logged on to the internet. I still don’t know who called me tonight. Though at least I can eliminate my folks from the equation, thanks to Star 10 Hash. Apologies if it were anyone amongst you, friends of Mellipop, who was trying to call me tonight. I would have been boring and sullen company anyway, devoid of even the slightest spark of wit - as this post attests to. I’m sick, see.