Cold Callers 2

Cold Callers  2

“Oh rats”   

Polite curses were an integral part of parenthood.

. I didn’t want a phone call at that moment. I was already multi-tasking.  It was tea time on a school day, Kieran  and Kulvinder  were hungry, grumpy and both had homework to do. I was cooking, overseeing the homework, and acting as referee to sibling rivalries and probably pretty grumpy myself. Both boys thought I favoured the other. It wasn’t true.  

The phone call would probably be one of those really irritating ones from a call centre, that sounded like a robot somewhere in India. 

“Hello! This is Angela, how are you today? I want to give you the chance to invest in some shares that will double your money! No risk!” 

Or “Hello! This is Adam calling from Microsoft Computers to tell you your computer is in danger…..”  at that point I generally stop listening. 

Or perhaps it would be silence followed by a click. There had been a lot of those. The cold callers or the boiler room fraudsters. Were they hot or cold?  They were heartless. They usually favoured this time of day – hoping people had their defences down. They were the swindlers who wanted details of bank accounts and birth dates. They wanted to steal identities and empty bank accounts.  

I only answered because I was nosey and it might actually be someone I wanted to talk to.  Ever hopeful, but at the same time ready to be angry with the caller. It was a man, a voice I did not recognise. 

‘Hello, is that Mrs ……..’ 

‘Who wants to know? Who are you?’ 

‘This is Frank from Social Services, I would like to do a short interview with you.’  

I wasus. 

‘I’m too busy now.’ 

 ‘I quite understand. I need to come and see you and do the interview face to face.  I will visit at a time convenient to you. 

’‘Why?” 

“I want to check that you are receiving everything that you are entitled to.” 

What is he on about? On yes, the cleaning, I got the services of a cleaner for three hours a week. Sometimes this was free; sometimes there was a charge ranging from one to six pounds a week.  I felt fleetingly pleased to be living in such an enlightened and caring local authority. I knew many people in need no longer had any help at all. I didn’t want to claim more than my due. 

‘Thank you. I think I am.’  

“Good, but I still have to see you, your entitlement is checked once a year.’ 

Frank sounded sad, perhaps everyone treated him with suspicion, and all he wanted to do was help.  I felt guilty.   An appointment was made for the following day.  

The phone rang again, this time there was silence.  

Frank was due to arrive at two o’clock. I looked at my watch, it was five past one. One of the many irritations of being a wheelchair user and living in a house is that one cannot rush downstairs to answer the door. I wanted to wash my hair quickly before he came. There was just time to dry it, and be down and ready. Ready to show how I was coping, how I didn’t need extra help.  

I remembered my new purchase, a styling hair brush. It was cylindrical with bristles all around. The hairdresser had used one on her last visit, in her hands it had made my hair look briefly, as one of the children had said: 

 ‘Like in the adverts on television.’  

Not true, but it certainly looked better than usual. The brush did seem to have done miraculous things in the hairdresser’s hands. 

Whilst drying my hair I gave it a quick brush as the stylist had. It stuck in my hair. I could not remove it and the more I tried the more stucker it became. The brush was right on top of my head at the roots. 

HELP!!! 

In panic I telephoned my niece Siobhan, she always sported a glossy mane.  

“Oh yes, those brushes are really dangerous. That happened to me once.” 

I wished someone had told me. She had no tips on how to get it out, and most unhelpfully collapsed in giggles when I told her about the imminent arrival of Frank.  So did I, mine had an edge of hysteria. Two o’clock approached, I went downstairs. The mirror showed me looking ridiculous. I frantically tried to disentangle the brush again, I couldn’t. When the man from Social Services came I had no option but to greet him with an eight inch long cylindrical hairbrush sitting on the top of my head.  It was so new it even had a large purple label hanging off it, very fetching I thought (not). 

 Frank was solemn. He was middle aged and sort of droopy, a basset hound sort of person without the ears, and as sad as he had sounded on the telephone. He looked very understanding of my gabbled and garbled explanation as to why I had a brush on my head.  In fact he looked as though being understanding was an important part of his job. He apparently saw nothing unusual in having conversations with women with hairbrushes hanging off their heads. All in a day’s work for Frank from Social Services.   

Frank asked a lot of very personal questions. 

‘Can you dress yourself? Feed yourself? How about the toilet?’ 

I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, and to go away. All these questions were opening a chasm, a glimpse into a possible future I didn’t want to think about. I did not like his assumptions and I was a bit worried that he would file a report saying that the children should be taken into care as their mother obviously couldn’t cope with her own hair let lone two vulnerable children.  The absurdity of the situation was getting to me. I was becoming slightly hysterical, like having the giggles at school, fighting to keep my laughter down. 

I was in receipt of the part of Disability Living Allowance that is for mobility. The personal care bit is different.  I told Frank I had NO problems; I didn’t need help with personal care. He looked at the hairbrush before writing in his big book. Because the brush was on top of my head it was sticking out at the side. I was looking, I felt, like cartoon characters do with an axe embedded in their skull, and the handle sticking out at the side. As the conversation went on it became apparent that Frank was looking so sad because his hidden agenda was not to offer me hair brushing assistance, or anything else.  His mission was to tell me that actually I was not entitled to having anything anymore, not even a cleaner.  

That wiped the smile off my face. By the time he left I was as sad him. Kulvinder came home soon after. I opened the door with one hand on the hairbrush, so that the girl who brought him home would think I was brushing my hair, not making a fashion statement.   Kieran was home next and tried a bit of very painful disentangling to no avail. Then he had a brainwave, to cut the bristles off. Genius. 

Free at Last..  

The telephone rang. It was someone who really, really, wanted to give me a mobile phone. I truly did not want a mobile phone; I had one. I wanted a cleaner, I needed a cleaner. 

Rose had been the first; she was a very efficient cleaner and a very nice person.  Kieran was two or three at the time, she was endlessly patient with him and his chaos of toys. I only saw her cross once and that was when she asked him what he wanted to do when he was grown up, he replied that he wanted to be a cleaner like her.  He thought she’d be pleased and was taken aback by her ferocity: 

“Oh no you don’t, you can do much better than that. If I ever hear you are a cleaner I will be very angry.” 

Rose was from Barbados, she had a lovely accent.  One morning I heard on the radio that employers would be prosecuted if any of their employees did not have a legal work permit. Rose didn’t come that day and she never came again. 

Her replacement was an extremely stroppy Frenchwoman called Margot. Margot was doing a doctorate in philosophy. She worked with a flourish, arranging things artistically, symmetrically. I would have preferred her to concentrate more on cleaning in the corners, but I never quite managed to say so except in an oblique British sort of way, which she ignored. 

That relationship exposed my problem with having a cleaner at all. I needed one. I could not, from a wheelchair, mop the floor or vacuum the stairs, but I was not easy with telling people what to do and found the relationship difficult.  Mary from Uganda always left early, my allotted three hours went down to two and a half and then to two. Fortunately she left before it went down any further. It was a curious relationship; for one thing although they were employed to clean they were called carers. As the Social Services paid their wage, it was not like I had an employee. One was deaf, and I think daft, she literally mopped carefully around a digestive biscuit that was on the floor. She looked really hurt when I pointed it out. 

“You didn’t ask me to pick things up.” she was right, I hadn’t. 

Yusuf was the only man cleaner.  He had been an engineer in Turkey. I think he was a bit obsessive compulsive, he did the same things in the same order every week whether they needed doing or not. For example, the bathroom walls did not need cleaning every week and I didn’t want to upset him.   

Then there was Tina, young and pretty, she telephoned one evening: 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know anyone else to ask. The electric has been cut off, I need twenty pounds, I’ll pay you back next week.” She did.  

A few weeks later at eleven at night she rang again, this time she was desperate for a cab fare to take her daughter to hospital.  That cost us fifty pounds, we never saw it or her again. 

With my family in Kenya I can at least now join in with the conversations about how the maid is always breaking glasses. I always found these conversations difficult, coming as they did from people who have probably never washed up for themselves. The first time I was in Kenya I was considered very weird for wanting to do my own washing. The rest dropped their clothes on the shower room floor and next saw them clean and neatly folded. 

Then there came the sad man who quite relieved me of the pressure of worrying about the vagaries of cleaners. His job was to go around the borough telling many disabled people that they could not have help around the house any more. They had to pay the going rate for help, or to mobilize friends or family or watch the grime build up.   He probably was sad. He had a thankless task. He was making most people he visited sad, including me and the corners were already growing murky. 

The phone rang. 

‘Is that Mrs ……..’ 

‘Who wants to know?’ 

“This is Sarah, I am phoning from Regents Street. I have got good news for you! Congratulations!’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘You have been chosen to receive a mobile phone! Free!  The latest Nokia! Yours to keep!’ 

‘Who is this?’ 

‘I am Sarah, good day to you. I am phoning from Regents Street London.’ 

I doubt it very much, sounds more like Shaheeda from Sylhet or Surinder from Amritsar. Sarah from Regents Street? I would be very surprised.  

I wonder how far down the food chain this particular bit of pond life is. It could be a poor person just earning a crust, albeit a dishonest crust, or is it someone master minding the whole scam?  

‘OK send the phone to me then’ 

‘I just need a few bank details…..’ 

‘Sarah, I live very close to Regents Street, tell me which number you are at and I will come and you can give me my phone.’  

Click. Sarah put the phone down, I am sure she will call again. I don’t even want a new mobile phone; I am happy with my brick. My youngest son is desperate for one. 

‘It is embarrassing; I am the only boy in the whole school without one.’ 

A likely tale.