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Answering machine
27 December 2004
So here we are in the dog-days between Xmas and New Year, where it’s always hard to find focused things to do; generally I think ‘I can use this time to give the house a thorough clean, preparatory to my birthday party’ and then suddenly find other more urgent alternatives. One of which is a little computer-housecleaning, such as for example clearing out my inbox; no one actually needs two and a half thousand messages cluttering up their inbox. So I file most of ’em, delete those few I can bear to live without and start the new year with a refreshing emptiness.
This year, my answering machine is equally cluttered, so I thought I’d start with that. And I’m halfway through - playing messages, writing down useful phone numbers and then deleting the message - and suddenly one of them is from my father.
It’s nothing, he’s just asking if I’m interested in a book he’s reading, because if I am he’ll send me a copy; and I wasn’t, particularly, so I didn’t call him back, because he was always hard to say no to. And then the next time I spoke to him he was in hospital and the world had changed.
And now he’s dead and I don’t know what to do. I can’t delete the message, I simply cannot; it’s the only record I have of his voice. And I can’t put a fresh tape in and keep this one, because it’s not on tape, it’s a memory chip. I suppose I could buy a new answering machine, but that seems extreme. I guess I’ll just leave the message sitting there, permanent until something changes; the phrase ‘the ghost in the machine’ keeps rising inexorably to mind.
© Chaz Brenchley 2004
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.