Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Postal irony

Parcelforce left a card saying they'd tried to deliver a parcel. Other couriers leave it with a neighbour, but they take it to the post office in the middle of town. I was away so Mrs Simpleton went to the post office to pick it up. Queued for ten minutes but they wouldn't give it to her because she wasn't me. So I had to go back into town to queue again and pick it up instead, armed with photo ID and proof of address.

Sorry to go on about this, but it's traditional when blogging about consumer gripes.

So it was nice to see how they've branded this service:



Monday, September 08, 2014

Vienna is the home of Isotype, but...

... these are the icons in the metro, next to seats reserved for people in gas masks... apparently.




Good morning? No, good night.

It's 2 seconds after midnight, and Sky News has just wished me Good Morning. That's just wrong. It's only morning in the Land of Pedants. For the rest of us it's still evening.

Don't ask me exactly when morning begins – I just know that it's after I've gone to bed. And dawn might also be involved. Or perhaps at 2am – the time they choose for changing the clocks when summer time starts or ends.

I recently learned that in Japan they extend the 24 hour clock when, for example, giving times for train journeys that end after midnight. So a train might depart City A at 22.30 and arrive in City B at 25.30.