WE live in the age of instant communication. Sorry, let me rephrase that: we live in the age of instant non-communication.

My last week's experiences rival anything in George Orwell's 1984 or Franz Kafka's paranoid social satire The Trial. First thing Monday morning, the phone went on the blink. I rang 151 and got the standard: "If you want to report a fault, press 1. If you want to check the progress of a repair of a fault, press 2. If you want to speak to a real human being - tough luck. If you merely want to commit suicide out of rampant frustration with this useless message, just hang up and hang yourself..."

Well, the automatic voice promised to ring me back and explain the nature of the fault. Five minutes later it spoke and said: "There is no fault on your line." Pardon me, but what's this hissing as loud as Niagara Falls then? Women are better than men at dealing with practical problems, so my wife graciously offered to take over the case. She too went through the whole repertoire: "If you want etc..." And the next time I saw her she was under the desk with a screwdriver working away at the phone connection in the wall.

She had been told that an actual call from a real-life engineer might be a possibility; but that if he found the fault - which, you recall, was not supposed to exist - was internal, then it would be deemed our responsibility and we would have to pay. Niagara continued to hiss. A couple of days later an engineer did call and discovered that the fault was the main cable from the phone company to the whole of our street. Well, my friends, I have deliberately cut a long story short to save you the tedium. But this - as it turned out - straightforward repair job took another five phone calls from me to the exchange.

It was, as I hinted at the start, a bad week. On Wednesday I had my wallet stolen from my jacket which was hanging behind the vestry door while I celebrated the lunchtime Holy Communion. I phoned the bank and got the disembodied, unreal voices again. One voice told me which number to ring to report the theft of a credit card. I phoned it and was asked for my name, address, postcode, sort code number on my cheque book and account number. I supplied all this information readily only to be told that: "Your details are not coming up on the screen."

The irate and sceptical voice really got through to me and utterly destroyed my confidence. So my details were not coming up on the screen. Could this be because I had ceased to exist or what? Anyhow, eventually my existence was acknowledged and I was informed that a new credit card would be sent within a few days. Except that this could not be sent to my home address - because my details were incomplete.

How will I get my new card then? I was told that it would be sent to a nearby branch of the bank and that if I phoned them first, went down there with passport, birth certificate, a utility bill, great grandmother's typhoid exemption document from 1909 and a commendation from the Archbishop of Canterbury - then I might. I'll keep you posted. But don't hold your breath.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.