Saturday 10 August 2013

Thick of It

Searching through my folders, I discovered a graph I did ages ago showing, for some reason, the age of the actor playing "Doctor Who"* since the show started. The other chart I did at the same time showing the difference in age between Terry Wogan and his female Children in Need co-presenter remains lost to the ages.

So I did what anyone would do. I updated it. It has a rather pleasing symmetry to it now, I'm sure you'll agree. (click to make larger, natch)


Bit late, if I'd done this I could have been famous with this. Well internet famous. Well probably not even that, truth be told, but there you go.


* Yeah, yeah I know.

Saturday 1 June 2013

Thatcher

I was just reading David Runciman's review of Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher (there's a sentence with what feels like too much punctuation for its own good) in the London Review of Books.*

Apparently Thatcher didn't like the Jews very much until she became the MP for Finchley and then she found out she actually rather liked them.

The mild, unthinking anti-semitism of her early letters – she complained to Muriel of the ‘“tatty” tourists: Jews and novo [sic] riche’ she encountered in Madeira on her honeymoon – gave way to a strong admiration for her Jewish constituents, among whom she found many of the values she herself cherished. ‘My, they were good citizens,’ she later remarked, seeing Jews as ‘natural traders’ who managed ‘positively to get on by their own efforts’. 

This is clearly a possible solution for all kinds of prejudice which should be investigated by some kind of government agency. Are the politically correct brigade busy at the moment?

Or at the very least another idea for a documentary to add to the every increasing and teetering pile.

* the actual print version, mind, although it's available to read in full here.

Saturday 16 March 2013

Voicemail


I do not like voicemail. It all seems to me a colossal waste of time. I'm not quite as bad as this person, but it's only a matter of time I feel.

My phone is on all the time. If someone rings me when I'm busy, or at work (of course I'm always busy when I'm at work this goes without saying etc etc) then I will get a missed call alert.

If I know the person, their number will be stored in my phone & I can call them back at the earliest opportunity.

If I don't know the number, then I won't answer, unless I'm expecting a call, because let's be honest, an unsolicited call is rarely going to be, well, solicited.

When I was job hunting, the recruitment agencies would call, it would go to voicemail & then they would leave a message*. Usually these messages were along the lines of "This is XXXX from XXXX, please call me back when you get the chance". 

My parents leave me long rambling voicemails which I never listen to, just call them back at the next opportunity. This works fine for me.

That covers my personal calls, but, as always, work is a whole different story. Generally speaking the person calling should know my email, or ring a group number, or someone else will pick up the phone. Inevitably the ones who manage not to tend to be the ones leaving an incomprehensible message, outside, near a loudspeaker, possibly with a thick accent. To add insult to injury the people who leave voicemail never have straightforward queries & always insist on describing them in full to the machine rather than insist I call back at the next opportunity, which is exceptionally annoying.  I'd set up a voicemail message saying, "my email is this, just send it there or call back later" if I were allowed. Unsurprisingly, I'm not.

I also hate leaving voicemail messages. I never ever bother with personal calls, but I'm supposed to at work to prove I called. For these I always try & be as succinct as possible, as above. I can't bear listening to my voice so I don't listen to the playback.

Doing this though, does make me wonder what the point is. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the best approach is: Don't bother with it people, there's much better ways to get in touch. Proof, were it needed, there's a little wiggly red line under every appearance above of the word "voicemail". 

* This could be a problem if their number came up as "unknown" on the phone & then I was out & about & they told me the number & I didn't have a pen, but that was my fault. Also, they'd often email me too which made my life easier & I could just take the number directly from the email.