It is such a comfort to know that at least one person in this world always knows exactly where I am at any given moment. The person knows this because his phone is connected - even from thousands of miles away - to my phone, and all he has to do is look at it.
Last week I took a sudden taxi ride to Penzance because the Mousehole Male Voice Choir was giving a concert at the Roman Catholic Church, and I had fallen asleep sitting up and forgotten about it. Good grief, I couldn't miss this concert, their very first one since Covid! So I called a cab.
"Where to, Madam?" my driver asked, as we got underway.
"Oh. Penzance, please. The Roman Catholic Church.." I did not know precisely where the Roman Catholic Church was because I hadn't had time to look it up. Besides, cab drivers are supposed to know where everything is. Aren't they?
"Where is the Roman Catholic Church?" he asked. His accent was charming and very different (it turned out he is from Italy) and a little bit hard to understand. Our conversation proceeded without us much understanding one another. The one phrase we were both certain of was "Roman Catholic Church".
"I don't actually know."
"Are you going to Mass?"
"Um, no, it's a concert. The Mousehole Male Voice Choir.."
"Does the concert not have an address we could look at? Is there a Facebook page?" I could understand his confusion. Usually the people he drives know where they want him to take them.
Suddenly my Maps app popped up with the location of TWO St. Mary's churches in Penzance. I called the first one.
"Hello, is this the Roman Catholic Church?" I asked the woman on the other line.
"Well, no - this is the Church of England St Mary's Church. There is a Roman Catholic St Mary's Church in Penzance, is that the one you want?"
I said it was, and would she please let me have the address. All of this took time, because the woman wanted to know if I was interested in the 7:00 Mass, which had already started, or the Mass the next morning at 10:00, which hadn't. The 7:00 Mass had a priest from another parish coming, but the next morning's Mass...
"Thank you, thank you very much, Ma'am," I tried to hang up.
"But the Mass..."
Just then the cab driver turned down a street he thought might be the right one, but it was so narrow, and had so many cars parked along it, that he had to pull his side view mirrors in so as not to HIT ANYONE'S CAR. The cab was literally less than an inch away from the cars AND the buildings.
My phone pinged.
"Where are you going?" asked my husband from 6,000 miles away, who had identified my sudden departure from St Ives, and wanted to be sure I was not kidnapped.
"My husband wants to know if I am being kidnapped," I told the cab driver.
"Kidnapped? Why?"
"Because our phones are connected so that we can check up on each other. It's rather comforting."
We did get to the concert, and he did come back afterward to deliver me home, kidnap-free. One day I will tell you about the wonderful music, and the Ukrainian opera star who had come to share the stage with the men, and how my cardigan had, in my rush, been buttoned up wrong so that everyone else saw it but me.
What else can you expect from someone who fell asleep sitting up and forgot to get ready? Nobody's perfect.
See you along the way!
the SconeLady
No comments:
Post a Comment