Wednesday 19 November 2014

19th November 2014 - On the perils of bad hand-writing

Thought for the day: "If you could look at the earth from 65 million light years away - you would see dinosaurs!! "

My hand writing has never been particularly good. That is really a bit of an understatement! It is a bit like my typing, The thoughts come thick and fast and the fingers are trying to catch up and then are trying to beat the brain a little and then they all get a little out of sync... With typing, it is immediately noticeable - especially when windows puts the little red squiggly bits around words it does not understand...  (don't start me on that again! 9th-october-2014-punctuation-and-pain). There is also the opportunity to go back and change the lettering. For those of us who learned before the WYSIWYG generation (What You See Is What You Get), when we had to use tippex and correction fluid it was a pain but still manageable.

Writing with a pen or biro is another matter. The words flow out in exactly the same random fashion, and the occasional spelling error goes slightly unnoticed, but more importantly the enthusiasm to get onto the next word means that they all drift a little together and some letters go into extreme motion blur...  

When younger I thought maybe I should be a doctor, as they are renowned for their inability to write clearly. I am sure that the Pharmacy trade is delighted with the innovation of computerised prescriptions, that can be legible and have proper instructions as to use... But when I was younger I also had to wrte a lot more - and that really ensured that you stayed in practice. These days I rarely write much at all except a few "Notes to Self" as my memory is appalling on many things - and I get so easily distracted. Oh yes - I came upstairs to order some contact lenses for my wife - and I started the blog...   Hang on - be right back!!! 

Right, 5% discount offered but not given so a quick call to the customer services and 5% applied - and not having to write a word.. Oh - forgot I was meant to check the address of the Chiropractor...   Welcome to he frazzled world that is my mind!!!

Ahh - that was quite amusing and on subject ... I found the gentleman who practices in Swansea and though was not sure how to spell Mactimony , as in a Mactimony Chiropractor, I obviously recognised the likelihood of a problem when I added the details to Outlook, as in the notes section there are four possible spellings so the search criteria was likely to find it !!

But the bottom line is that I think that someone somewhere had problems reading my hand-writing.  A month ago I sent some letters to Germany. These are bill sand letters that come to my address as post restante for a friend in Germany, so everytime there are a few I send them off. I sent a covering letter and, rarely for me, having some euros available and wishing to book a week in Drachenfest I sent 100 euros cash for my advance ticket... I was therefore saddened when week after week went by without the package arriving. I thought to myself - "well there you go!  Don't trust the post". When the deadline for early booking I duly sent a paypal payment an decided that I should write off the loss..

Today a strange parcel arrived from the section in the Post Office dealing with returned letters. Inside I found the pile of bills all unopened, and my covering letter from which they obviously devised the return address, and sellotaped on the back of the letter were 5 x 20 euro notes. So.. Hats off to the operatives in the returned-post office who must have seen it, and left it there and duly returned the parcel. Restores my faith in humanity again ... 

The reason for the return?? Well I have checked the address and it was correctly written. I have checked with my friend and it is correct. I can only believe that some poor soul in Germany could not decipher what I had written and put it into the returned mailbox....

Next time I will type out a label!!

Black and White day ..


So - off to Cardigan. Not driving so may have a glass of wine over dinner...   Cheers !!

-o0o-
Useless item of the day (other than me!)
 
That's where we want them planted?





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