It doesn’t seem that long ago that there were no mobile phones, and unless someone in your share-house could afford it, no answering machines either. Quelle horreur! The best you could hope for was a flatmate who never went out and was really good at taking messages… Unlike today when it is painfully clear when you are not receiving phone calls.
I think at some point most of us have felt like this and wondered, why the %*!@ didn’t you call??…