h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To borrow a simile from Monty Python, my moods have been up and down like the Assyrian Empire this weekend. For the first time in 12 years of trying, I met a girl in a club (I've always met them other places before) on Saturday night *and* got her phone number.

She came and talked to me, which frankly was bloody necessary 'cos I'm a bit of a shy boy... But I didn't give her up as a lost cause when other blokes were dancing with her and that, and got enough nerve up to go and talk to her again towards the end of the night, and somehow it worked

So I spent most of Sunday with a ridiculous grin on my face and came in for a rude shock on Monday lunchtime when I tried to ring her. The phone number I had didn't work.

*Normally* I'd just taken this as a brush-off, but what happened was that upstairs at the club I asked her if she wanted to meet up some time, and she said yes. The only way I had of getting her number was to programme it into my mobile, which was downstairs in my coat in the cloakroom. So we all trooped down to the cloakroom and I got my jacket out, put her number in my phone, and she even looked at it and checked it, and told me I had one number wrong (I'd got an '0' at the end rather than an '8').

My housemates and I concluded that Thing is, surely she wouldn't have gone through all that just to get rid of me - wouldn't she just have said no thanks when I suggested meeting up?

All I knew was her first name, where she came from (but not where she lives in London), and where she said she works - but I think she was having a laugh on that one... so, what to do?

It's fortunate I've spent some time as a researcher and am used to phone bashing...what I actually did was this:

I worked out that I probably had the code right and assumed that I had the last number 'cos she'd told me that one.

So that meant one of five digits was the wrong one, which meant 45 possibilities. I figured I had nothing to lose, and decided to ring the lot. I only spoke to about eight actual human beings, and got a few answerphone messages and lots of 'number out of use'. That left five possibilities that just went to the standard Orange answerphone message. So I thought "Well, that's it then - at least I tried"

But on Monday evening, one of those last five numbers rang me back and it was her!

I suppose she would have been expecting a call from a strange phone, so... We're meeting up a week on Thursday

Fortunately I was out in the garden at the time and didn't get to my phone in time, so she got my answerphone message (which fortunately *does* have my name on it) and then tried again.

All's well that ends well, I suppose.

(oh, apologies to those who have already read versions of this elsewhere... but I thought I ought to explain *why* I feel better than James Brown)

(and just how good does James Brown feel?)

Ah, is this the one you mentioned a few days back, to which I replied 'All agog'? A week on Thursday... man, I couldn't wait that long

I know, but one of my housemates' has his 30th birthday this week (he's the first amongst us to hit the 30 mark, I'll be the second ) so he's taken the whole week off and we're celebrating it in stages. Huge barbecue yesterday, we're off for a day trip to France today, a meal for his actual birthday on Wednesday and a big party-cum-housewarming on Saturday. It'd be bad form to bail out of any of that, and I'm working the rest of the week - I could do Sunday but she couldn't, so Thursday it is

45 numbers.... you much really like her....

That'll be a good story to bore the grandchildren with!

Good skills Six , dunno if I would have the face to call 45 numbers so well done old bean!

45 possibilities, and so much optomism..how wonderful that it worked out



Have fun on your date, she'll be charmed again I'm sure

heeeee!

What a great story, and I'm glad it had a happy ending. I was irresitibly reminded of Arthur Dent knocking on doors at random to find Fenchurch in 'So Long And Thanks For All The ' after losing her phone number. I hope your doesn't disappear into a space-time vortex!

What did she say about the numbers story btw? You... did tell her didn't you?

Did the story end in Irony? You had written down a Number 6 and it really should have been a Number 1?

Wow, Six, I admire your perserverance with all those numbers!

Excellent news that it paid off

How we like it when good things happen in life - makes us all smile for a change !!

Jules

Thanks everyone

If I'd never done my three months in Leeds or my odd days at Five Live working as a researcher, I'd probably never have done it... but everything happens for a reason that may become clear in the future, doesn't it?

I did tell her what had happened, but only admitted to calling 10 or so numbers. I'll admit to 45 later on if things go well Otherwise I might come across as a bit scary, when I'm not really And to tell the truth, at least 20 of the numbers were out of use, so it's not stretching the truth too much either. Fortunately I'm on Orange and so were all the numbers, so it only cost a couple of minutes off my talk time. And it were worth doing anyway.

Really, I think it was just the frustration of letting the first someone nice that's been interested in me for ages slip through my fingers - I thought, I might as well try this, and at least I can say I've done all I can if it doesn't work.

Gnomon - a nice thought, but it was an '0' and a '1'.

Now being an accountant, if that had been me, I would have worked through the transposition errors first.

There's only 4 of them, at least in the simple case anyway

Did you know that people can be divided into the visual, who confuse 3 and 8, and the verbal, who confuse 5 and 9? I suppose people who confuse 0 and 1 have spent too long in front of their computers.

I usually confuse 2 and 3

That's such a sweet story- I hope it works out for you

I reckon in my case, people who confuse 0 and 1 were knackered and a bit drunk

What d'you mean, transposition errors, GD? In spite of myself, I'm interested.

Transposition errors: getting the order of the numbers wrong.

Taking your case and representing it as 12345. The four simple errors are: 21345, 13245, 12435 & 12354

It is the first thing that an accountant would check if something doesn't balance. If the totals are out and the difference can be divided by 9, you've got yourself a transposition error

Ah, I see! It wouldn't have helped in this particular case, though The ones I went for first were the numbers surrounding each of the 5 numbers on my phone's keypad - i.e. if it was a 4 I'd got down, I thought a 1,5 or 7 would be most likely 'cos I'd just hit the number next to it by mistake.

Turns out I'd just misheard her. They play loud music in clubs

The main trick now is to try and forget about her until next Thursday. Or at least, that's what one of my housemates reckons, and he's normally pretty good at this sort of thing. Well, at least, he's always been good at the beginnings of relationships - I'm the one that's bad at starting them but good at keeping them going.

Forget about who?

"They play loud music in clubs"

Which is one of the reasons I have never tried to pull in a club. I've got a particularly quiet voice, and I can't raise it enough to make myself heard. Or if I do, it's guaranteed laryngitis the next day