Shades of Blondie

I'm a lucky man. In addition to having one woman lusting after my pallid zombie flesh, I've started to be courted by another young lady. I must confess, I'm rather flattered. The world is a big place, though, so I suppose people with Gargoyleophilia must exist somewhere.

The problem is, she doesn't return my calls. Yes, she's being a little coy, and I, for my part, am desperate to hear her sweet voice again. I don't know, it reminds my of that song - Call Me. It's a good one, and anyone fortunate enough to hear my drunken glass-shattering rendition should try the real thing, if you're into cheesey 80's songs about prostitution, or just like gazing at punk-themed Debbie Harry and wanting her to whip you.

Anyway, this affair - I'm calling it an affair because cool misogynistic people would do that - this affair began a few months ago. Me and my level-headed housemate were going over the gas bills, wondering exactly why we'd not been charged for any gas recently. And by recently, I mean, ever. It was a puzzling thing, since we'd done everything right. We'd called British Gas to give them a meter reading. We'd called British Gas to set up a direct debit. We'd called British Gas to encourage them to spell our names correctly on future correspondence - something they have yet to do. We'd even called them to ask why we'd received a final demand for a property that wasn't ours, addressed to our landlord. A landlord whose name they'd spelt wrong.

We'd even called twice to ask why we weren't being charged for our gas.

Anyway, we finally cracked it the other day, with the help of a certain British Gas call center operative who has a voice like honeyed honey. She was very sweet. She told us the reason why we'd not been charged for any gas in the last nine months was that British Gas were actually reading the meter for an unoccupied flat on the other side of the road. That was somewhat inconvenient. Anyway, we were told we could expect an amended bill sometime soon, once they'd gotten the meter reading right.

Without detracting too much from this new girl I've become infatuated with, it's kind of peeving. I mean, is the company ran by blind, dyslexic clowns who work to some sort of arcane, superstitious time frame that stretches into the epochs? By not reading our meter right now, do they hope to reap some enormous benefit in two hundred years time? Do they operate on a scale that is incomprehensible to my puny brain? Do they think the numbers 17 and 84 are interchangeable when billing someones gas usage? Do they think you can spell someones name using entirely vowels?

The British Gas billing Database. It predicts that the world will end in 2012.

Anyway, this girl. She works for British Gas.

I'm really starting to pine for her now. Seven times I've called her in the last three weeks, and each time she's promised to ring back. It's starting to get upsetting, and I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a crazy stalker. So my question to you, Internet, is does the British Gas lady actually want me? Is she being coy, or is she just not interested in me? I've tried to get in touch, I really have, but each time she just taps away on her computer and tells me that she'll ring back. I keep getting my hopes up that I could resolve this nightmare billing problem, and each time she crushes me, like a bulldozer driving over a poppy before exploding.