Completely forgot in previous post to mention party line telephones.

My mother got fed up with the "other side" listening in to our calls. There was an audible click when they picked up the receiver. Conscious of them listening in, she used to say "there's a cow on the line". Very quickly there was another click as receiver was replaced. It happened quite a few times before other side got the message.

Another gem was my grandmother, who had resisted having a home phone until living on her own. One day whilst talking to my mother she said "can you see that big plane that's just gone over?" She died before computers came to the fore so wasn't any link there. My mother was about ten miles away...