2.30am,and the phone rings...

My late BIL became confused at the end of his life in a nursing home and would phone me during the night. He thought my DH was still alive (who’d had dementia). I’m a night owl anyway so I just chatted as if nothing was unusual, but the calls always gave me a start.

That made me laugh out loud Gwyllt. 😂

there is a latest scam going round where supposed relatives, kids etc say phone not working, been robbed, this is their new number send money to get home, I have had them call / text me a few times saying it is my daughter and she needs help, be very careful especially now with the new AI phones they can even recreate loved ones voices

But did she find her phone or get a bus ticket? 😟

After leaving teaching I worked on the shop floor in Tesco in Devon for a while. I was loading up the shelves on aisle 22 when a rather nice man stopped to asked me where a particular product was.

We ended up standing and talking for a long time (fortunately no supervisors around) He told me he lived in Dorset and was on his way home. There was such a lovely spark between us, I felt sad when he left the store.

I decided to put an ad in a local paper in Dorset. It said something along the lines of "Tesco lady on aisle 22 wishes she had got to know you better" and I included my phone number.

He didn't ring, but one morning at 3am my phone rang and it was a woman on the line. She said " I saw your ad in the paper. Did you want to have sex with him ? " She rattled on rather madly for a while till I told her she was crazy and put the phone down.

I had a late call saying my daughter (17) had been attacked. It was the same day that they found a young girl’s body (Milly Dowler). I have never moved so fast in my life. She luckily survived this random assault (sexual). Knowing what happened to Milly helped me to deal with it, I was so grateful to have her still with us. My BIL died at 5 am one NYE, so that was another one and recently my sister died suddenly in the late evening. Late night calls scare me silly.

My phone is on silent between midnight and 8 am. Only one person I know is likely to phone during those times and if so it would be because there’s an emergency, so her number is allowed to call. In the past 8 yrs she hasn’t had to

Pre mobiles we used to get calls late evening or in the night, from people wanting a solicitor. Our number was almost the same and we eventually wrote down the correct one.
We either told them that they’d rung the wrong number or gave them the correct one.
Sometimes, if it was stupid o’clock and they’d woken me up, I’d ask what the problem was or how could I help before I told them.

The two times I have been woken up by the phone in the middle of the night was my SIL to tell me DD was in labour and would I go round and look after the older children so they could go to the hospital. At the time we lived about 30 minutes away and DD has fairly quick labours so it was a mad dash to pack a bag and get out of the house. Both labours were a few weeks early so the call wasn’t expected. It’s amazing how quickly you can wake up when you need to.

Got calls in the early hours from a friend who’d become an alcoholic. Time meant nothing to him. In those days, my parents were alive, so I had to have contact.

This very morning my phone went at 04.58 . It wasn't the ring tone it was the message tone. I ignored it but it happened man times over the next hour. Finally as my phone was downstairs and I was upstairs I thought I had better see what was happening. the message was from my friend's phone and she would not do that sort of thing. There was no indication where the rest of the messages came from. I contacted my friend after 7am but it was not her who tried to message me and she lives alone. So I have no idea what that was about.

I had a repetitive heavy breather at 2am while my twins were weeks old.
The house phone was next to the room where they slept and at 2am, with new babies, being woken any time was not favourite.
You couldn't leave the old phones off the hook, because after a fixed interval they would scream.
Finally we wrapped the phone in several towels every night and managed to shut it in the kitchen at the end of its string.

When my children were teenagers we lived out in the country, about two miles from the nearest bus stop. They knew that they could ring me any time, day or night, and I would come and get them, no questions or recriminations. I'm a light sleeper so getting going was not too difficult, even at three or four in the morning. I often found I had to deliver one or more of their friends home too; it amazed me that their parents were happy to leave them to dodgy minicabs, potentially drunken lifts, or worse...

A few times

During lockdown my DH had a very serious stroke. I wasn’t allowed inside the hospital with him and had to leave him at the door in a terrible state. I hardly slept that night (and indeed the whole time he was in). I finally fell asleep in the early morning, then the phone rang at 5am. I was convinced the hospital was ringing to say he’d died, but it was a really kind nurse who had rung to tell me he had just been transferred to another hospital.

He was in there for 2 weeks, without being allowed any visitors, but the good news is that he recovered completely. He’s almost like a normal person now!

We got a few calls in the small hours from the police to let my DH know that someone had put a brick through the office window. It happened a few times.
The police didn’t always wait and DH would let himself in to turn the alarm off in the pitch black.
I used to worry until he was back home in one piece. One was a very angry man who was going through a divorce and he did the same thing a few weeks later and was arrested. It was a long time ago but we would be awake for most of the night.

Yes landline calls maybe 30 odd years ago now - our number one as digit removed form the local taxi drivers ... drove my dad insane!

Now that I am sick and disabled, have disastrous nights despite being heavily medicated, I'm worse than useless before around 10.30am, so get really cheesed off when someone from some office somewhere calls me in a very cheery voice at around 8.30am ... and woe betide my carers if they turn up before 10.30am too!

My elderly neighbours phone rang in the early hours of the morning a few years ago. She answered and a man was singing ‘I just called to say I love you’ she listened and then said I think you’ve got the wrong number. He was mortified and so apologetic!! We laughed over it

My MiL was in hospital after a fall and one of the doctors rang at 1.30am to ask various questions about her and when she had been diagnosed with dementia. At that stage she hadn’t actually had a diagnosis although we suspected she had it. As the phone was on my bedside table I answered the call. DH slept through it!

Oh yes, like when my son called me if I please could come and pick him up because train was cancelled. 30 km.away that was and at 2 a.m. It's all in a (grand)mother's life 🤷🏼‍♀️

My daughter was working in Egypt as a Travel Rep. She had
been on an evening airport run and they were returning when
the minibus was held up at gunpoint. As she was the only one in a uniform she got the gun to her head while they robbed
the passengers. The company sent her for therapy afterwards.
However I think I needed it as well after she rang me at 3 a.m.
to have a good cry.

I work from home ( tho semi- retired now after a life- threatening illness) but my landline number was on an advertising sign in the window. Pre Covid I used to get a lot of middle of the night calls from drunks passing the window on their way home, thinking it a jolly jape! …I eventually removed the bedroom extension and had peace again for a while … after my illness I had an ‘alert’ pendant and the relevant contact box put in my bedroom. So now when the landline rings downstairs it rings through the box but I have no way of answering the phone which is almost worse cos your imagination works overtime wondering who or what the call was…….usually Spam callers despite being on the ‘no spam calls’ register . The good news is that due to Covid a lot of the nearby pubs closed so fewer drunks passing by! I take my mobile and iPad to bed with me and if an emergency then family and friends would call on that…so far, touch wood, no early hours calls yet!
The funny thing was when I was ill and hospitalised, the hospital tried to call my next of kin ( as I was taken in suddenly with no contact info) and they called my ex husbands wife in the middle of the night asking if she were my daughter or sister? So she had to phone my son ..who had been out on his birthday binge and in no fit state to receive a call! Tho fair dos he got on a train and was down here the next day!

mousemac

I had a repetitive heavy breather at 2am while my twins were weeks old.
The house phone was next to the room where they slept and at 2am, with new babies, being woken any time was not favourite.
You couldn't leave the old phones off the hook, because after a fixed interval they would scream.
Finally we wrapped the phone in several towels every night and managed to shut it in the kitchen at the end of its string.

No heavy breather here but fed up of people phoning in the early hours …I did the same…only it was a cordless phone…I took it off the receiver wrapped it in clothes and stuffed it in the back of a wardrobe in an adjacent room!
Had a few weeks of peaceful nights then,….but months later I tried to retrieve it and couldn’t find it!!! ( it did turn up eventually) but I’d buried it so deep that night, and it had subsequently run out of ‘charge’… it was lost for months!

Yes, my daughter saying that my son in law had been in an accident and was being airlifted to a London hospital, and could I come to sit with the children. I was useful in a moment of great need. I do not turn my phone off ever.
Disappointingly, I've never been called by anyone to sing that they love me ... still, never say never..

We used to live in a house where the landline number was one digit different from the local Samaritans, and we often had night time calls from desperate and suicidal people. It was very distressing to have to say sorry, you’ve got the wrong number. It was always hard to get back to sleep.