Grumpy Oldie Man Matthew Norman
They drive you mad with endless inanities – so the answer is simple…
‘I developed this insatiable appetite for pan-fried tampons’
It will end, consoled a friend who has come through the ordeal. He couldn’t predict when. But like a fierce storm, he insisted, it will blow itself out and stop as suddenly as it began.
It began several weeks ago with the bleakest two-word combination in the smartphone-screen phrasebook. ‘Withheld number’ flashed up. I replied with the requisitely brusque, ‘Yup?’ ‘Is that Mr Norman?’ enquired a voice. ‘Mmm.’ ‘Hi, Mr Norman, how are you today?’ ‘Very average, thank you,’ I replied, ‘though marginally worse than a few seconds ago.’
He chuckled indulgently. ‘Let’s see if we can do something to improve things.’
Let’s absolutely not, I thought. Let’s end this now. For some reason – an insanely misguided flicker of interest, perhaps, or pitiful weakness masquerading as courtesy – I didn’t.
He introduced himself as Gary from Car In A Ditch? Get Stinking Rich!, or whatever this one of the myriad coldcalling outfits styles itself.
‘Now we gather you’ve been involved in a no-fault road accident and wondered if you’d be interested in claiming for any injuries.’
I informed Gary that I did have an accident. I further told him about the collision in Salisbury that sent my ancient little Audi to its rest. Albeit limited to the extent that I drove into a double-decker bus for no discernible reason, it was entirely my fault.
‘Well, let’s not rush to judgement about that,’ said Gary.
‘You’re very kind,’ I said. ‘But it was more than a year ago. If the Nuremberg Trials were concluded in less than 11 months, I’m not convinced this constitutes a madcap rush to judgement.’
Gary smoothly moved on. ‘Did you sustain any injuries in the accident?’
While I was shaken enough to require self-medication with numerous octuple whiskies, I told him, there was no physical harm whatever.
‘Did you suffer any damage to your neck?’
That seemed to open the door on an exploration of the ambiguities inherent in the word ‘no’. But Gary had delighted me long enough. I bade him good day, and rang my friend to report.
‘It will end,’ he counselled, ‘but it won’t end there. There are hundreds of these bastards, and they all buy the same information from insurance companies.’
His car was pranged outside his house one night while he was asleep in bed. At first, he patiently tried to communicate the unlikelihood that he would have sustained any injuries. After a few dozen calls, he snapped, pivoting first to livid ranting, and then to mischievousness.
‘Don’t get cross – try to have some fun,’ he said. ‘It might ward off the stroke.’
So, when Steve from XMQ Solutions, or whatever, took the baton from Gary and sprinted through the spiel, I instigated a more philosophical discussion than the semantical one that Gary had narrowly escaped.
‘Whether it was my fault is a fascinating question,’ I began. ‘Can we really be held responsible for anything? Do we have free will? Or is our every action the result of an almost infinite number of factors over which we have no control?’
‘Er, are you saying it was no fault or not?’
‘Ah, Steve, that’s the nub of it. Ask my son, who’s about to graduate in philosophy, and he’d take a pretty rigid, determinist line, positing that… Hello, Steve? Steve, are you there?’
With Craig from Oodles of Cash For Your Whiplash, or whatever, I glossed over the no-fault conundrum to focus on the medical. ‘Physically I was fine, Craig, but could I claim for psychological damage?’ Assuring me I could, he asked for the details. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, but about a month after the accident – delayed shock, would you call it?’ – he said he would; that or post-traumatic stress – ‘I developed this insatiable appetite for pan-fried tampons drizzled with Fairy Liquid. The lemony one works best. I’ve eaten almost nothing else ever since. I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve put on almost a stone.’
‘I see,’ said Craig, sounding dubious. ‘Anything else?’
‘Recently, I haven’t been able to look at an ambulance without desperately wanting to chase it. And in my shape, what with all the extra weight, that could be fatal.’ Craig departed soon enough.
I can’t be exact about how many such calls have ensued, but the spread would probably be in the region of 40-44.
The last of yesterday’s trifecta featured Joe from Small Crash Huge Cash Lawyers Who Live Only To Help, or whatever. Midway through a staggeringly verbose account of my newest symptom of post-traumatic stress – the words ‘withheld number’ have started inducing a psychotic fantasy featuring a Damascus interrogation cell and a pair of ultra-highvoltage electrodes – Joe interrupted.
‘Sorry to butt in, Mr Norman,’ he said, the sullen fatigue in his tone sounding weirdly familiar, ‘but I’m not sure you’re taking this seriously. I’m beginning to think you may be wasting my time.’
‘And now,’ I said, sampling a line from Seinfeld while internally taking a solemn oath never to answer a withheld number again, ‘you know how I feel.’