This morning, at 1:35am, we were all sound asleep. Not a mean feat in our house at the moment either, as we've all got that coughing bug. Anyway. The phone rang.
I went flying out of bed, convinced that something had happened to my Mum, who's 75 and hadn't been well. But when I picked up the phone it was one of those bl**dy automatic recorded advert messages. It must have been supposed to start with Santa's laugh, but the recording had gone weird and it was this huge, deep echoey, HO HO HO like something out of a horror film. Well, you can imagine. 
I was absolutely furious. The phone woke up the children as well and it took us ages to get back because as well as me being terrified we all started coughing as well. And that was just us - a generally healthy family. Can you imagine the state an old person living along would have been in - at least I was able to work out what the bl**dy thing was. All I could think of was what it would have been like for my mother if she'd been the one getting the call. Or someone with a heart condition hearing that at 1:35 in the morning - the mind boggles
The number, of course, was Unavailable. So this morning I rang BT's advert complaints line and they said there is NOTHING they can do as these calls come in from abroad. There's the Telephone Preference Service for UK advertising - which we're already signed up for - but nothing for this sort of thing. They gave me the number for another organisation: can't remember its name but they told me I could register a complaint even though nothing can be done.
I rang up the new number - on hold for 15 minutes - then I was told that without a number to specifically complain about they couldn't even register my complaint! As I said - the number was unavailable. I asked if BT could provide it to me but apparently BT never give out an unavailable number. Unless, of course, I wanted to take out a private prosecution and get the police involved.
They said that even if I had the number there would be no point in getting it barred as there are scores of numbers that these effing things come in on. We can't just blanket ban international calls as dh's dad lives in the US. She said they might have been able to identify it via BT if it had been the last number that had called us. But of course, by this time, we'd been phoned by someone else so that wasn't to be done either.
GRRRRRRRR It's bad enough without being told there is nothing I can do to stop these b*stards doing it again to me or anyone else!!! Can anyone think of anything else I could possibly do that would have even the remotest bit of effect (or at least calm me down a bit???)