Sleep-deprived phonecalls

The Moiderer has a rather fantastic competition going at the moment with a rather fabulous prize that I know I could use! I don't know how she's done it, but she has!

"Pampers are offering an hour's consultation with Wendy Dean, their sleep expert, as a competition for my readers. The consultation could be face-to-face or over the phone depending on the location of the prize winner. The winner will have the opportunity to seek advice on helping them get their little one to sleep, tailored specifically to them."

Seriously, how has she landed that one?! I am up for entering it, I bet you will be. In order to do so, you need to:

"post on the Linky the story of the worst thing you have done in your sleep deprived state (frankly I need something to make me feel better about my car accident!)"

Mine is not a #badnightcoffeeclub mummy story, it stems from teenage years. Here it is:

The background to this story is that my childhood home was on the corner of a block. Behind our house, and taking up the bottom half of the block, was a L-shaped block of flats which was mostly inhabited by old dears. The other essential piece of information is that as my mum had been a home-help for a time, she knew many of these residents. She'd also been a hairdresser and used to do their perms, or do a bit of shopping. She set up a fruit & veg co-operative too. My dad was a car mechanic and a very practical DIY-er. So you get the picture that between the pair of them, they were like a little community resource? The phone would often ring with requests of "can you come & change my wheel?", "I can't reach the lightbulbs to change them, please can you help?", "Is there any chance you can buy me some eggs when you pop down town later please lovey?". My brothers, sister or I would often be despatched to whichever flat to help out if it was a minor job. We all enjoyed it.

Ok so… oh God I'm so ashamed to even write this! One of these lovely old dears was a real poppet called 'Miss Phillips'. Yes that's her real name, she's long-gone and didn't have any children, I'm not losing anonymity by telling her name. She was late 80s, rotund, proper old-school manners and charm. Fair to say, I was quite fond of her. She often called me 'Florence', not my name, but I was young and went with it.

One day, early in the morning, and I mean really early – 5am, the phone rang. My bedroom was next to the living room and I stumbled through to answer it. Now you need to understand that until my eyes are open, I am not properly awake, and it takes a long time for my eyes to open. I fumbled for the phone and gruffly muttered something that sounded like "hello" down the line.

Dear, lovely, sweet, Miss Phillips proceeded to put in a normal, everyday, mundane request. I never knew what it was because I wasn't awake enough, but I do know it wasn't life threatening. I replied and put the phone down. I went back to bed, and sleep, like everyone else in the house.

(Oh God, I've got butterflies admitting to this!)

Later that day, my mum asked me who had been on the phone that morning. I told her no-one  had rung. She patiently explained that yes, the phone had rung and I had indeed answered it. I thought for a second and my blood ran cold. Mum looked at me and repeated the question "Who was it?" but this time she also asked "What did you say?". At that stage I did not use vulgarities infront of my mother, so had to provide her with an edited version. But I can tell you now, that poor, innocent Miss Phillips got told "Oh for f***'s sake it is 5 o'clock in the bl**dy morning! Bl**dy phone back later like normal s*dding people do!"

My darling mother smoothed things over with the old dear by telling her it was a wrong number, and she was fine with me afterwards; I think she was developing memory problems. However, she never phoned again, and to this day I will not answer the phone until I'm sat up in bed with my eyes open.

(So ashamed!)