The mysterious phone call

All things considered, this phoning business isn't turning out to be very succesful.

Me: "Hi, I'm Mark van der Born. I'm looking for a Robbie Howett..."
Man: "YOU LOST THE WAR. STOP HARASSING ME!"
Click.

I swear to Callsheva (The Indian demi-God of tele-communications) that there are a lot of strange people out there. I'm sure most of them are perfectly harmless, but I do question the success of 'Care in the community' as a whole.

Another phone call I made Friday morning:

Man on phone: "Robert speaking."
Me: "Hi, my name is Mark van der Born, am I speaking to Robbie Howett?"
Man on phone: "Yes. What can I do for you."
Me: "Well, I went to school with a lad from Penicuik called Robbie and I was wondering if that was you."
Man on phone: "I've never been to Penicuik. Sorry."
Me: "Oh well. Sorry to have bothered you."
Man on phone: "That's all right. Why are you looking for this school friend?"
Me: "I'm writing about it. You know..."
Man on Phone: "Do you live in Scotland then?"
Me: "No, I'm down in Manchester."
Man on phone: "Manchester! That's quite close by. Do you want to meet up sometime?"
Me: "Uhhh... well...."
Man on phone: "You seem quite sympathetic, I'm sure we'll get on fine..."
Click.

And anyways, what the hell was he doing at home instead of at work??

I went off to the library to do some online job searches, etc. and as I'm walking past the town hall, my telephone rings.
"Ah..." thought I, "that will be the sandwich shop offering me a job as a toilet cleaner or the Ikea turning me down because I'm not qualified enough to sell office desks... and probably mentioning child labour and the fact that I despise the quality of their products didn't help too much either..."

"Hi, Mark speaking." I say in my professional and highly ADHD friendly manner, like a dog wagging its tail when its owner comes home.
"Mark van der Born, is it?" replied a dark and husky male voice. A voice that sounded like it drank too much whiskey.
"Yessssss..." I answered, it didn't sound like a blonde haired, happy-go-lucky-human-resource-girl-from-Ikea.
"I've, *cough*, heard that you are *cough* *cough* looking for..."
There was a hesitation which I've cleverly portraid with the triple dots...
"a missing 'friend'..." The man sounded like he smoked too many cigars and he lingered on the word friend as if he didn't quite believe that it was a friend I was looking for.
"Well, yes. As a matter of fact..."
He wasn't going to let me finish my sentence and rudely interrupted with a voice that sounded like Tom Waits' after a night of binge drinking and opium inhaling:
"I can help you."
"You can?"
"Meet me Tuesday 10:30am in the park in front of Claremont primary school. Be there and come alone."
Click.

How bizar is that?
I'm well chuffed! At least someone is wanting to help me!