The website of Tim Rogers
My wife Natalie returned from a shopping trip to Kingston today and reported that Marks & Spencer no longer sell full length dressing gowns.
This is for health and safety reasons following complaints from customers who have tripped on the ends of their dressing gowns and hurt themselves.
I travel by train to work and am daily regaled with automated announcments while waiting at the platform, particularly at Clapham Junction. These announcements are rather good, and cleverly seem to be on a separate system to the display boards, so that if one fails, the other will continue to function. Normally the announcements consist of something like
The train on Platform 13 is the Brighton service, calling at East Croydon, Gatwick Airport, some other place or other and Brighton.
in an extremely realistic voice, presumably by an actor who must have spent several weeks reading out the names of stations and numbers and pieces of sentences to be joined together later by computer prior to announcement.
What tickles me is when there is a delay and the voice says something like
The train on platform 13 is the delayed 7:23 service to Brighton. I apologise for the late running of this service.
How can a machine apologise? It feels no remorse at all that my journey has been delayed and so the apology is meaningless. Now, if the announcement passed on the apology from the train company, or the driver or something, that would be different.
So today I was doubly puzzled while waiting at Epsom station for a train to Ashtead and I heard the announcement say
I wish you a Merry Christmas.
Note, it didn’t say “The staff and management of South West Trains wish you a Merry Christmas”, or simply “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, but “I wish you a Merry Christmas”.
To me, this is just as meaningless as an apology for a late-running train. The machine isn’t passing on the expression of a human feeling (”sorry” or “Merry Christmas”), but is attempting to express it directly itself. Surely that just doesn’t make sense.
So, in the spirit of automated announcements, this blog wishes you a Merry Christmas and apologises for being the cause of any delay while you read this drivel instead of getting on with something interesting and fun.
I passed the site of my grandfather’s building in Fenchurch Street last week. It was built in 1969, and it broke his heart when he learned that they were going to demolish it.
He passed away in July, and now all that remains of his beloved building, one of the first skyscrapers in the City of London, is a rather sad stump that will soon disappear.
In my capacity as Treasurer of my rugby club I have just received a letter from Jeremy Best of Carlsberg UK, who writes
We are passionate about the game; in fact I play it and would like nothing less than to help grow your business for the future.
He would like “nothing less”? That suggests there is a vast swathe of things he’d rather do more than help grow my business.
My grandfather passed away this morning, aged 94. One of his proudest achievements was the construction of 20 Fenchurch Street in the City of London, of which he was the architect. The building was occupied by Kleinwort Benson from 1968 to 2006. It is somehow poignant that his life has come to an end at the same time as his building is in the final stages of being demolished.
I walked past the spot last week and stopped to gaze at the progress of demolition. Because of the nature of its construction, they are having to dismantle the building floor by floor from the bottom up, with a gigantic steel structure in place to keep the whole thing supported.
20 Fenchurch Street is destined to become the site of the new landmark skyscraper known as the Walkie Talkie.
Apparently I can look and feel better for less by eating baby food.
I spotted this after Lorenzo’s even more hilarious look and feel better for less — with Coke.
The Putney gang celebrated Matthew’s 40th birthday yesterday starting off with drinks in Red followed by a meal in Pizza Express. Read the rest of this entry »
William had great fun with his Uncle Tim on Sunday.
It was William’s first birthday party on Sunday. Thanks to his cousin, Katya, he had plenty of fun with some helium balloons.
At work I sit next to a Clyde supporter called Tony. As well as being a football club with one of the shortest names in the United Kingdom (pipped to the top spot by Bury), there is an interesting story about the club relating to a footballer whose contract was terminated early and was paid off to the tune of £30,000. Read the rest of this entry »
