Haggis Day

OK, so I spoke too soon. Or, rather, I wrote too soon. I mentioned the other day that I had not experienced outages in my Internet (Why does that word start with a capital letter?) connection. You've guessed it. To add insult to injury, I have also been having trouble accessing my email contacts and I have an email to send to the members of Brighton Lions Club!

I share a peeve with Buck who was complaining about call centres being located on the Indian sub-continent. I, too, frequently have trouble understanding what I am told because of the accent. Indeed, a friend of mine asked for so many repeats that she was told by the operator that if she was hard of hearing he could increase the volume. Many British companies - well, some - are bringing their call centres back to the UK. I just hope they don't staff them with Glaswegians or Geordies. We'll be no better off if they do! I did hear somewhere that one can ask to be transferred back to an English office is a call to a help line ends up in India but I can't speak from experience.

About this time of the year I like to review the photographs I have taken during the year and select my favourite, a task which is much easier some years than others. This looks like being a difficult year. I have a short list of five (so far) but I still have more to look through.

Now that my American friends have Thanksgiving done and dusted for this year and we in the season of Advent, I feel safe in mentioning the next major holiday, Christmas. I have already made a start on the shopping having bought presents for two of the three grandchildren and one of the three children.

I asked my granddaughter (4 1/2) what she wanted for Christmas, expecting a torrent. I was astonished to hear her reply: "Nothing".

Reverting to the matter of peeves, I'm sure there are many who find it irritating to phone a company and be given a long, automated list of options. What really gets my goat is the fact that when I have pressed the button for my chosen option, the computerised mandroid starts telling me the next list before I have got the phone back to my ear! Eventually, if one is very lucky, one reaches an option which promises to find the only human in the company offices. That human, however, is trying to deal with a hundred or so calls and I, meantime, am being kept in a queue listening to Vivaldi and another irritating computer assuring me at regular intervals that my call is important but that all their agents are busy dealing with other customers. I sometimes wonder if the intention is to drive callers away. I quite often end up replacing the phone but there are days when I feel so liverish that I hang on until somebody is forced to listen to my complaint. It doesn't often do me any good. Indeed, it often just increases my frustration.

We should be eating haggis today. It's St Andrew's Day.