Inappropriate? Big time!

A while back I posted on "things not to say to prisoners".  Today, for some reason, a connected memory came to mind.  I think it was because I have a new mobile phone, which I'm trying to get to grips with, and I was thinking about ringtones.  Anyway, in the Olden Days when I started as a prison chaplain I was allowed to take my mobile phone into the jail.  Nowadays if I tried that I could end up in prison myself! 

I remembered today about a time when I had my mobile phone in my handbag in the filing cabinet in my office.  A prisoner was in the office with me, pouring out his many troubles to me, when my phone rang.  I hurried to the filing cabinet to turn the ringtone off but the handbag in question was one of those with nine hundred different zipped compartments in it.   Could I find the phone?  No.  Not until this whole ringtone had been played.  Can you imagine ANYTHING less appropriate to be playing in the presence of a lonely, homesick guy who of course was not himself allowed to have a mobile phone.  In my defence the only thing I can say is that it was my dear children rather than me who had set the bloomin' ringtone.  "Oops!" was about all I could say...