On the way back from the Gallery just now, Owen, bjh21 and I encountered a cat in the road, and a couple of concerned passers-by said it had been run over and was injured. Since this was about two houses away from Relativity, Owen stood guard to make sure the cat didn't get run over again while I went to Relativity to phone the RSPCA. Sadly what the RSPCA advertise as an emergency phone number in fact kept me on hold for ten minutes while persistently repeating a recorded FAQ about baby birds, and then Owen showed up and said the cat had at least displayed enough mobility to get itself off the road and out of immediate danger, so I left a message on the Blue Cross answerphone instead and we decided we'd done all we could do.

I'm sure it's terribly interesting to know that baby birds tend to spend a couple of days floundering around on the ground immediately after leaving the nest because they haven't quite got the hang of flying yet, to be reassured that this is perfectly normal and the mother bird is typically not far off while it's going on, and that the RSPCA can't help because they are unable to teach baby birds the life skills required for their long-term survival, but I'm unconvinced that I needed to hear it four times instead of, for example, hearing something I didn't already know.

When I rule the world I will make a law about keeping people on hold, and that law will make it mandatory to give statistics to help the caller judge how much longer they will be on hold. Current average rate of call handling, number of calls ahead of you in the queue, that sort of thing. Because I have a suspicion that in fact my call wasn't in a queue just now; I suspect there might have been nobody around to take my call, and the automated queuing system hadn't bothered to signal this to me in any useful way. If I'd heard ‘There are currently zero people ahead of you. The last call was answered at six p.m.’ or some such, it would have been clear to me instantly that I was wasting my time.