The man in the phone shop greeted me with what I presume is a look specifically designed and reserved for those asking to cancel their contracts. This look could best be described as ‘You are dead to me. Get out.’

I have been trying to cancel this contract for many years. I never use the phone, I have another one, with another company. But the bill for the old Sim card still comes out of my bank account and I can’t work out how to make it stop.

I rang them as usual at the start of the year – this has been my New Year’s resolution for seven or eight years now – and a nice enough man on this phone line explained to me that he couldn’t possibly cancel my contract over the phone, I would need to go into the shop.

So I went into the shop, and, you guessed it, the very first thing the man in the shop said to me was that he couldn’t possibly cancel my contract in the shop, I would need to ring the phone line.

He then refused to say another word. He stood in front of me in silence and simply existed. It was like performance art. He could get work as a street artist called the Amazing Non-Speaking Phone Man.

‘See how he stands and stares at you for hours without moving a muscle! Marvel as you clap in front of his face and he doesn’t even twitch!’

I rambled incoherently: ‘Oh, er, I did ring the phone line but they said to come into the shop, because, to cut a long story short, the phone this Sim card was bought to go in is a second phone, and it doesn’t work any more, so they can’t cancel it over the phone because that would involve sending me a text to this phone, and this phone won’t switch on…’

I held the dead phone out to him but he refused to move his arms. He stood in front of me staring, blank-faced, not moving a muscle. I felt my only option was to go on saying things.

‘I’m really sorry, I know it’s a pain, but I have been a customer for a while now and you see this phone was meant to be a second phone, like a burner phone, not that I’m some sort of criminal, or work for MI5, ha ha, I mean, that’s a joke, but anyway, I just wanted a non-smart phone so I got this one and it’s useless, I mean, it’s not like I haven’t tried but this whole thing of having a second phone isn’t really working…’

Still nothing. The amazing phone shop man stood motionless in front of me. I noticed the badge on his shirt said ‘Store Manager’. Holy cow. I couldn’t even say: ‘I want to see the manager.’ I would have to say something much more engaging to get him to engage with me, like ask him his pronouns, or inquire as to whether he would marry me.

I ploughed on with the rambling: ‘So I just really need you to help me by, I don’t know, could you put the Sim card into another phone and I’ll sit here and call the phone line and they can send me a text to that phone and…’

‘You could put it in your iPhone,’ he said. The sound came out of him but nothing moved on his face.

‘I could, I could,’ I rambled, ‘but you see the thing is, you’d have to help me with that as well because I don’t know how to open up an iPhone, I would probably get into a huge mess and do something terrible that would mean my iPhone wouldn’t work anymore…’

‘We can’t use any phone in this shop. They are all models.’ He said it, I could hear that. But again, there was no visible sign this man was talking to me.

Suddenly, he reached over and took my dead phone out of my hands and put his finger on a button. He held it there for what seemed like half an hour or maybe it was three hours, I lost track of time and then the phone beeped into life.

The amazing phone shop man said: ‘You must press the on switch for a minute.’ He then fiddled with a computer keyboard and informed me that my extra phone was only costing me £25 a month. ‘Well, I mean, that’s not much for a phone I don’ t ever use, is it?’ I stammered apologetically. He shrugged. I took this small expressive movement as a compliment.

And so I walked out of the shop with the not-so-dead but still completely unnecessary phone in my bag, and naturally I haven’t cancelled it.