LET me make it clear from the start. I’ve got nothing against emailing in principle as a means of communication. It can be useful. Then again . . .
Last Saturday morning I switched on and the first message was from a man called Simon Green who I didn’t know.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I hope that you’re having a good weekend.’
I had been, right up until I read that. I knew that Simon, poor sucker, was going to try and sell me something. He went on: ‘I am writing to let you know about the UK Data Company and our current data offers for March 2013.’
I was going to reply by offering him a brisk recommendation on what he should do next. But I’m not sure if you get yourself into trouble by using that word in an email. Pity really.
Last week I also had an email saying: ‘Norwegian launches new direct route to Ibiza from London Gatwick.’ This certainly caught my attention, but it seemed unlikely to me.
Roald Amundsen, one of the most famous Norwegians in world history, was the first man to get to the South Pole, in 1911, and to the North Pole, in 1926. I could readily believe that he was now planning trips to warmer climes as a preferred lifestyle choice.
But there was something of an impediment to this. Amundsen died on a rescue mission for other explorers heading for the North Pole nearly 90 years ago.
Of course it was the wrong Norwegian I was thinking of. The email was from a low-cost airline called Norwegian Air Shuttle and it had a new holiday flight on offer.
I cast this email into outer darkness as well. But wherever Mr Amundsen might be now, I hope he gets the Examiner. I would like to wish him well. I just hope his last voyage into the unknown had not taken him to somewhere which might be rather too warm for him.
But there is one thing about these advertising emails which are, in my case at least, forever doomed to abject failure. It’s their friendliness. You know the sort of thing: Simon saying: ‘Hi.’
I also get them from FlyBe keeping me up to date on route information. I often go on FlyBe and I am happy to hear from them. But they keep on addressing me as ‘Terence’.
Call me Tel in future boys.
Finally, one outfit which didn’t send me an advertising email was the Castle View Nursing Home in Peel. They put a leaflet through my front door giving details of their dementia and other elderly care services.
How did they know I was nearly ready?
• JOHN Kerruish in Peel tells me he heard Health Minister David Anderson MHK on Manx Radio refer to ‘The Lancet’ as ‘The Lancelot.’ John tells me he asked Mr Anderson for an explanation and was told that Mr Anderson must have been thinking at the time of his uncle whose middle name is Lancelot.
Well at least Mr Anderson wasn’t thinking of Pamela Anderson.
• I HAVE been sent, anonymously, a paperback science fiction novel called ‘The Howling Stones.’ It’s about a mysterious body in the far future called ‘The Humanx Commonwealth.’
The people there have three legs?