One of those "England" days

Lets start with the good news: i recovered my phone. It was lost, and then it miraculously was turned in and now i am reunited with this small piece of critical equiptment. Thank you to the lost-item gods.

Now, on to the black-hole effect that i encounter in England on a regular basis.

After i got to the museum on Monday, i realized that the missing phone had indeed not been left there. I promptly called the Oxford Bus Company to see if anything had been turned in. Lo and behold, the woman on the other end of the line said, yes, a phone matching that description WAS turned in, and she would go and get it to verify it was mine! Hurrah - until i was put on "hold" (the handset of the phone was simply set down on the counter). For about 10 agonizing minutes, i could hear that the woman had returned with an object (said phone) and was talking to a colleague (now an assumed Monster or Man-in-Black perhaps) about their weekends and their kids and their next holiday. At some point i started asking, loudly, if they could hear me - had they forgotten about me? Now i know: this is why, when you normally call the Oxford Bus Company, it takes about 5 minutes for anyone to answer the phone! Its not because, as the recorded message states, "All of their customer service representatives are very busy" - rather, they're idly chit-chatting about the weather and footie and the godawful haircut they had recently. Gah! So i chew my nails, shout occasionally into the phone, and finally, my heroine comes back. "Yes! We have your phone!" she says. I ask if she's sure - since when i had called over the weekend, there was another phone of very similar description which was NOT mine. Well, she's mostly sure, but i want to be very sure - so i ask her to turn it on and check so that i can identify the picture wallpaper. BAD idea, since this activity (presumably very simple, no?) takes another ten minutes with more evidence of office joking and chatting. After a while - meantime i had come very close to hanging up and calling back because i thought they'd forgotten about me again - she says, "Yes! We have your phone!". Great, i say and arrange to come pick it up that day, before 5 when they close. Superb.
I catch the early bus back to Oxford, and arrive at the bus station, walk into the office, and announce the purpose of my visit. The nice young woman behind the counter looks at me sympathetically, and says, "No, we don't have any phone here". I tell her, in as calm a manner as possible, that there has been some mistake, now kicking myself for not getting the woman's name i spoke with earlier. I start to think there's been some bad joke, and this bus station IS one of the portals into the Underworld or outer space. Monsters Inc is real?!
It turns out, that the lost and found is NOT LOCATED at the bus station! Its located about 30 minutes away, in south Oxford! Okay, well that would have been useful information to know, since its now ten minutes until 5, when they close. Thank god for Searle, the man at the office who takes pity on me and my plight, and agrees to let me in if i knock at the door when i arrive, as long as its before 8.30. Soon, after some suburban trekking in the industrial district (i did get to see the warehouse where Mini's are built) i arrive and am happily re-united with my phone! Hurrah! And, i am currently backing up my address book as i write.
This whole experience led me to the conclusion that things do not operate on a logical progression necessarily in England. It has to do with the ideas of customer service, and providing the necessary information in a logical way. When this effect is most pronounced, i know its been an "England" day - things work out, but in a needlessly circuitous, frustrating fashion. Maybe this happens everywhere, or maybe England just has more portals into the Otherworlds that i've heard and read so much about. I prefer to think its the latter (witness the Plant Sciences Library as well, and O2, and the Royal Mail and the OUCE IT department, and, and...). Of course there are exceptions like The Alternative Tuck Shop (are they efficient or WHAT?) and the London Tube system, but if we assemble all the data, there seems to be something going on here. All makes me more thankful that anything ever really happens or manages to work properly.