I have decided that the time has come to remove my answerphone message.
It is a bit ridiculous, rather annoying, and completely unprofessional. It is also so long that most of my friends refuse to leave me messages. The time has come for a change. However, before it goes, I am going to tell you how it arrived.
About 3 years ago, whilst on a Psychiatry placement as a medical student, I had an opportunity to go hiking to an MDT meeting in Bakewell. I decided to camp overnight in Calver, then walk to Bakewell for the meeting. Obviously, I took Heze with me.
Around 9:30pm that evening, Katherine dropped me off in Calver, a place I had never been to before. I went over a stile, wandered up a hill and looked for flat land. After a fairly strenuous search, and, I believe, a barbed wire fence, I found a flattish bit of land, and took out my tent.
I’ve put up many tents before, but I’ve rarely done it on my own, in the dark, with a tent I am completely unfamiliar with. After about 30 minutes, I finally got the tiny thing up, and crawled inside.
It was my first trip out in my shiny new (secondhand) Coleman 1 man tent, and it was a bit of a squeeze inside with a dog, a bulky rucksack and me. What with the sweating, the dog poking me in the ribs, the cows that I discovered were sharing the field with me and the strong wind making every rustle of the tent sound like an angry farmer just itching to start up his tractor; I did not sleep well.
It was at this point, about 2am, that I decided it would be a brilliant idea to zip up my tent, and record a new answerphone message. Listen to it below:
[audio:http://allaboutchris.org/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/answerphone.mp3]Who would have known that “a long time ago” would stretch so far. Guys, feel free to ring me – I have a new answerphone message now!