Tuesday, 13th March 2001.
Fooled

This evening Barb and I had dinner at Nancy's place. We drive round to her street, and Barb realised that she couldn't remember which house was Nancy's. I stood in the street yelling out "NANCY!" while Barb scurried around trying to find a flat that she recognised. Soon enough Barb found the right flat.

"People keep ringing me for Chinese Takeaways!" complained Nancy, as we lounged post-dinner.
"Why's that?"
"I don't know! I must have a similar number to a Chinese takeaway."
"Or your number might be the old number for a Chinese takeaway."
"Or that," agreed Nancy, "but I swear, these people keep ringing up, and some of them just start chattering away in Chinese! And they leave messages on my answering machine, in Chinese!"
"How frightful."
"I'm thinking of changing my answering machine message. 'I DO NOT SPEAK CHINESE!'"
"Well that ought to work."
Nancy continued: "I DO NOT SPEAK CHINESE, BUT I SPEAK A LITTLE GERMAN!"
"Ein bischen Deutsch!" I said.

So in the end I recorded the greeting on Nancy's answering machine. It now goes something like this: "Hi, you've called Nancy. Nancy speaks English, und ein bischen Deutsch. Please leave a message for Nancy after the tone."

After our answering machine fun, we went to the bowling alley. We had wanted to go to a karaoke bar, but we couldn't find any karaoke for tonight. Instead we plumped for a bit of Disco Bowl! Imagine our disappointment when we rocked up and were told that disco bowl was only on weekends, and it was regular trailer trash bowl during the week! Oh well. We had a crack anyway.