Mobile hussle

Geez, when you sign up to a mobile contract you know what you're initially getting; a mobile phone, a charger and perhaps even a blu tooth head set so you can create a demeanour of importance to the rest of the public as you dally down the local kebab shop with a shiny blue thing hanging from your ear. What you don't expect is that by entering a contract you are also entering a mobile poker game, where in 12 months time you'll be contacted day and night via phone, e-mail and post informing you that you're a due an upgrade and you should contact them now. Well this is what’s been happening to me the last month, I've been texted and called. They managed to get me though, the other day I was phoned up by some wide boy who immediately starts to plant a tone that he's actually doing me the favour, constantly trying to close the deal before I close the flipper on the phone and end the call. "200 texts, 200 free mins, cross network anytime, I'll do that for you, yeah?" I get asked, well more like told. "I'll sort you out with a K800i too, nice bit of kit, cause you're a loyal customer and I like ya."

However, having done my haggling apprenticeship in the school of woeful decisions and experiences I'm now a little savvier in the art of 'upgrades'. Firstly I amass an armoury to let the wideboy know that I'm not one to be charmed by his friendly/threatening deal proposals. Luckily for me 02 have just brought out the £15 a month for 200 mins and texts so I tell the wideboy that I'm not upgrading and in fact I want to cancel and to tell me the procedures as 02 is offering the exact deal minus phone. The wideboy doesn't like this. I can hear his gold jangling on the other end of the line, probably motioning the wanker sign. Secondly, I play the silence game. After I've told him that I want to cancel I keep quiet, letting the static air and jangling gold create an uncomfortable silence. "Why you want to quit then?" He tells me. "I can leave 02 after 30 days notice, and I've already got a K800i." I tell him. "Right well, can I call you back I need to speak to the supervisor." While he's doing this I go on t'internet and look to see what's the most expensive gizmotastic phone available. I find it and discover their tariffs begin at £35 I don't really want it I just want to see how much I can get away with.

The phone rings and wideboy tells me I can have 400 free minutes, 300 free texts and a new handset for £22 a month. I tell wideboy that I want the N95 for £22 in order for me to stay with them. Wideboy mockingly laughs as he says the N95 starts from £35 a month. I don't laugh and tell him I want to quit. Wideboy says, "I'll just put you through to loyalty department". The third step I take is to ask the next person more than you originally asked for. "Hi, yes I want to quit but you colleague said that you may be willing to give me the N95 with a 2GB memory card, blu teeth handset, no cost for itemised billing for £22 a month, is this correct?" The loyalty person, who is in fact quite polite and well mannered, informs me that this cannot be done. "Ok then, no worries I thought it was too good to be true, can you tell me what I have to do to quit?" The silence erupts again and I wait for him to speak. “I tell you what I can give you the N95 only but nothing else." Success! I smile to myself even though I don't really care about the phone I was cajoled by them to enter this hussle game and so I wanted to win, and I think I did. "Ok, I'll take it."


I managed to channel my energies of success into writing some more prose. Hope you enjoy it.

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Yannish, couldn’t help but grin as he thought about what was asked from him. His first thoughts fluttered with the idea that he was definitely mad. The guy was a murderer who abused his position. He took great gratification in killing Polonius the old whinging crank, who wouldn’t? The only time he took a moment to reflect about his actions and the occurrences he caused was when he picks up the skull of Yorrick. Only then does he begin to realise what he has done, but true to a madman’s perceptions of reality he dismisses them as if they were nothing. Yannish presses the pen nib against the paper fighting against the urge to write ‘Hamlet was definitely a nutter’ and then let the potency of the short statement be interpreted by the examiner any way they wish. A few minutes went by before he decided against it thinking surely year after year at least one pupil writes that sort of drivel.

He did love though, can mad men love? Of course they can, does that mean that perhaps within all that madness there is also sanity? He thinks. What about if he isn’t actually mad at all, his feigned madness never seeped into realism. No no no, that can’t be it. The pen nib leaves the paper but is still hovering above. He wasn’t mad, he was fuelled, no drunk on the responsibility to exact revenge on his uncle. He couldn’t handle it so he decided to use this feigned madness as a coping mechanism, an outlet of this drunkenness to justify any actions he makes, even killing. Yes, yes that’s it. The nib is back on the paper. He looks up at the clock knowing there was still two hours and fifteen minutes to go. The last time he looked at the clock so intensively was when they were forced to watch Hamlet with the rest of his class. Mr Crooks originally brought in the 1948 Lawrence Oliver version of the play where even one of the finest actors couldn’t galvanise the classroom attention because it was in black and white. Mr Crooks knew this but shook his head in a pitying manner as he ejected the video cassette from the video player. The next lesson he brought in the 1990 version which featured a less formidable actor in Mel Gibson but it was in DVD and more importantly in colour so everyone watched. Helen Bonham-Carter was Ophelia and Yannish remembered just how beautiful she was, it was the only reason he concentrated on the film. Her long curly brown hair and those intense eyes, he’d love to have a relationship with her like that. They could spend evenings drinking fine wine and listen to each others stories, and when they tried to have sex it would take them about ten minutes before even the foreplay started because of the time it would take to remove the copious amounts of clothing. He could tell her anything.

Hang on, he was sure that Hamlet loved Ophelia before his father’s death so therefore why didn’t he tell her his plan to feign madness. Isn’t that what people in love do? He could have given her the opportunity to try and understand what he was doing or what he was going through, but he didn’t. Why not? The pen nib once again rises from the paper, a page has been written. No, this is not it. He didn’t tell her because he loved her. What his ghost father said crushed him from the inside. His father speaking from somewhere he could not go telling him he was poisoned by his own brother tore hamlet apart. His mother no longer by his father’s side, by Hamlet’s side when he most needs her now but by the king’s side, the uncle’s side. The dual torturous motions running side by side in side of him. One churning out a passion for revenge only quenched by killing his uncle to relieve this pain. The other considers the magnitude of killing someone, he’s done it before, but not from the council of a ghost, so much conflict for such a young Hamlet that he couldn’t wish to share this with Ophelia. Would she ever believe him? Would she help him? She’d never let him carry it out because she would know, they both would know that in order to do it Hamlet would as well have to die. No, he would go succeed in what he had to do and then go back to her but unfortunately the bumbling Polonius got in the way so he had to kill Ophelia’s dad. Surely Ophelia’s opinion of him would be changed now. But no matter, by now it was too late, the feigned madness had become madness itself being unable to cope with the things happening to him. A vessel of coping, it’s just that too many people he loved/loves have been hurt by his actions that surely there was only ever going to be one ending. But damaged, though he became he fulfilled in revenging his father even though it cost him his life.

It’s hard for Yannish not to think about Hamlet’s predicament. He could have just walked away, ignoring the ghost. He could have listened to the ghost and believed what he said but still he looks at the pages he’s written and feels a little lighter after transferring those heavy thoughts on to the paper. There’s nothing he can do now but check the spellings and think about getting himself a drink after all this. Soon all exam papers are picked up and everyone is spilling out in to the fresh air. Yannish spots Keith from a distant, catches his eye and nods at him as they both start to make their way to the pub.