Early this evening, when I had finished an afternoon of interviewing PhD candidates over zoom, I set off to meet my wife, who had, for her approved exercise, gone walking over Hampstead Heath. I phoned her to check the route she was on, and also shared my location on google maps.

For some reason the latter didn’t work, or at least, my sharing did but hers didn’t. In any case we successfully rendezvoused near Parliament Hill and had a pleasant walk back together by the ponds. Even though some of it is by now a sea of muddy footprints, the heath is a lifesaver.

A few minutes after we got home, the new landline phone I bought a couple of days ago rang, with a waiting message. Picking it up, I heard a deadpan, strangely menacing robotic voice say

“I can see you, but you can’t see me.”

Horrors flashed through my imagination as I stared round at the nearest window (onto our back yard, thankfully empty of menacing robots). Until I guessed, and confirmed what had happened. When the one-way location sharing was in effect, she had texted me a message, but sent it to the landline by mistake, and BT were kindly reading it out to me. I guess I should be glad she didn’t sign off with

“Smiley face emoji”

Anyway, gave me quite a turn, it did.