Waiting For The Bailiffs

It’s the knock at the door we all fear.

That and the Jehovah Witnesses.

The three men in three quarter-length coats and porkpie hats come to help themselves to whatever they fancy of your stuff with the government’s full permission in recompense for an unpaid debt.

My wife and I have received 2 warning letters now. The last one was a red one. Unpaid traffic fines. Just under £500. What’s that in Guy Ritchie-speak? A monkey? 5 ton? Whatever, if they gain access to the house that’s the TV and X-Box gone. Or maybe they’ll be kind and just take our sofa?

I live in fear for my Lego collection. They can take my kids but my mid eighties classic space collection is definitely off limits.

I wouldn’t mind but the debt isn’t even ours.

A previous occupant of our house – please bear in mind that my wife have been living here since 2003 and have a mortgage and everything – has been running up some mid-range debtage and not updating her address with the creditors involved. Normally when we receive post for this ex-inhabitant I sling it back into the post with “return to sender (address unknown, no such number, no such zone)” scrawled all over it. Occasionally, when a particular company has been particularly persistent, I have opened the mail, read it and written a reply along the lines of: “Carrie doesn’t live here anymore, Carrie used to room on the second floor, I’m sorry but she left no forwarding address that is known to me...” but best of luck tracking down the dirty little welcher anyway.

We haven’t received anything for “our Carrie” for a while now. Until a letter last week from a company that shall remain nameless chasing down £450+ in unpaid traffic fines, that is. We had 2 weeks to cough up or the bailiffs would have leave to unburden my household of some choice goods and chattels to the aforesaid value aforementioned – they kindly pointed out that we didn’t need to be present for due process to take its course. A polite threat if ever I read one.

I rang them up. Annoyingly the automated message-bot tried its best to chicane me to its automated payment department and I had to cling on for dear life just to speak to a flesh and (cold) blood operator. “Oh yes,” they intoned, “You’re ringing about debt reference blah blah blah, aren’t you? Is that correct?”

I told them it was half correct. And then pointed out that their debtee was unknown to me and hadn’t lived in my house since 2002 at the earliest as my wife, two kids and mortgage lender would gladly testify if given the opportunity. The operator then deferred to a higher authority and I suffered piped Christmas tunes until she returned, suddenly a little warmer, a little more humane, and explained that her supervisor had given her permission to insert more up-to-date address details on this particular account and we wouldn’t now be bothered again; we could ignore the letter and put it all behind us. How kind.

Except it all left me mystified. They plainly had Carrie’s new address elsewhere in their company; they certainly didn’t ask me for it (I don’t have it anyway; besides which Carrie made me promise not to squeal) so why didn’t they just update their records as a matter of course in the first place? Why chase me for Carrie’s debt, eh? How does that work as an effective business plan?

Hmm.

And then I received the second letter from them – the red one – on Saturday.

The bailiff’s will be donning their lippy and their sling-backs and gearing up for a home visit unless the money is paid ASAP blah-de-blah-de-blah.

So you see, all this being the case it makes me think that, despite phone-lady’s warm assurances, the bailiffs are still coming. It makes me think they think I am actually Carrie - only I’ve had a sex change op in the interim and I’m trying to pull the wool over their eyes with some sick tale of fake domesticity.

Wife and two kids? Yeah right. Mortgage? A bloody fairy story.

They’re coming for my PlayStation! They’re coming for my set-top box with series 2 of Fresh Meat indelibly ensconced within its electronic innards! They’re coming for my wife’s Kindle Fire HD still unopened in the box (it’s OK, she already knows, it’s not a surprise).

Well, they’re not touching anything of mine! Not without a fight.

I’m defending my kid’s (and my) Christmas presents here! If I have to ventilate the lot of them then that’s precisely what I’ll do. And if a few Jehovah’s Witnesses get taken down in the confusion, well, just consider it a seasonal bonus from me to you.

A Christmas gratuity.

A yuletide freebie.

Totally debt free...

Authonomy

I've taken the plunge.

I've uploaded my novel, The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini, to Authonomy.

This is my one concession to e-publishing. I've resisted all other e-outlets due to my own misgivings and stick-in-the-mud nature. To be fair some of those misgivings have been fuelled by accounts of some agents not being fully on board with writer's who have sought to self-publish. You can see why after all... it potentially puts them all out of business.

I always judge it better not to bite the hand that may one day agree to feed you.

So on the whole I am going to pursue the trad route: postal / email submissions to agents that are open to new writers.

But Authonomy, run by Harper Collins, seems a sensible alternative. It sure as hell can't do any harm.

You can log in and read The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini by clicking on the picture above or following this link: http://www.authonomy.com/books/44092/the-great-escapes-of-danny-houdini/ - if you're already on Authonomy then if you'd kindly rate it / back it / add it to your "bookshelf" then I'd be eternally grateful.

I must admit, I'm not entirely sure what to make of Authonomy at the moment. It seems very friendly but also a little desperate and frenetic. It seems you have to do a lot of backscratching to get your book rated highly enough to be deemed worthy for consideration by the professionals at Harper Collins. And the backscratching comprises reading a lot of other people's books.

To be honest, I just don't have the time to dedicate to such a full-on project. Fine if I was at home all day with nothing better to do but I have a full time job, a family and a desire to write and only a small amount of time to do all that in.

Authonomy seems to me - and this is just first impressions - to be a little like The Apprentice. Everyone taking part needs the help of everyone else to win but at the same time you don't want your colleagues shining too brightly lest they eclipse your own luminescence. Do you scratch your colleague's back less hard than he's scratching yours or more?

So. I'm not sure how it's going to go. I've been on Authonomy 1 day so far and rose 8 places over night only to slip down again 6 since daylight. To get anywhere it seems you need to be permanently wired up to the system.

Must be great for Authonomy's web stats though... no?

Call me a cynic but I'll keep going with the envelopes and stamps. To that end I have just revamped my synopsis following some fabulous on-line advice ferreted out by the brilliant Sunny Side Up. If you're a writer you might find the following advice on synopsis writing (the bane of every writer) useful:

http://www.writing-world.com/publish/synopsis.shtml

http://www.annemini.com/?cat=1070

Other than than, The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini is out there and available to be read by all those that care to. If you have the time to leave a review, well, I'll be your best friend until I inexplicably slip back down the rankings again.

Thanks.

Strapline

Straplines and folds are important.

They are important in life (particularly if you plan any nude sunbathing) and they are doubly important in marketing (where they mean totally different things).

It doesn't matter whether it's a poster, a flier, an advertizing leaflet or even a web site.

You need to get the important stuff above the strapline. Above the fold. With a web site it is good practise not to force your prosepective customer to scroll down too much. People don't like it. It is tiresome. Carpel tunnel syndrome, etc, and all those other health problems that regularly afflict couch potatoes (e.g. swollen right wrists).

Get the exciting stuff up there at the top. Right up where people can see it. All the sexy stuff needs to be there in pole position - the glossy photos, the amazing once-in-a-lifetime prices, the bogof offers, the shiny teeth, the perky ice-cube hardened breasts of your advertizing model (doubly important if the model happens to be female).

People shouldn't have to scroll downwards, or unfold a sheet of A4 to get to the point of what you are trying to sell.

Doubly important is where you place your banner headline.

I cannot stress this enough.

Take a look at the photo above. I scanned this advertizing flier into my computer yesterday exactly as I pulled it from the envelope. It illustrates perfectly the point I am trying to make.

Now. I know what it is supposed to say. Suite Clearance Event.

But that fold... occurring where it does.

When I first saw it, I could have sworn blind the U in suite was an H...

And, yes, when I opened it further I realized that, yes indeed, it should have been an H.

Tits and teeth, people. Tits and teeth.

Boycott Stupid Blogs

Most of us accept spam now like we do litter on the street. We don’t like it. We wish it wasn’t there. We wish we knew who the people were who scatter it all around so we could rip off their heads and piss down their necks (or is that just me?) – but by and large we put up with it. We grit our teeth and accept that it is the natural consequence of sharing the world with inconsiderate, lazy, self serving idiots.

We get used to it. The offers of cheap Viagra. The invitations to join casino syndicates. Those “hello darlink, I want to be your love-woman from the Ukraine” emails from people who speak to us with an intimacy lifted straight out of a 1970’s top shelf magazine.

I turn a blind eye. I hit delete. I wash & go.

But occasionally, just occasionally, one gets my goat (or gets right up my goat if you’re of an Australian persuasion). I bet as soon as I type the title of this insidious piece of blogging spam at least 50% of you are going to put your hand up and say, “Ooh, I’ve had one of those too”. The other 50% of you will put your hand up and ask to go to the toilet. Well tough. You should have gone before you came in here, shouldn’t you?

Boycott American Women.

Or as the perpetrator writes it: BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN. ‘Cos those capitals make all the difference, don’t they? You wouldn’t notice it otherwise. The entire message would get lost in the mindless, knee-jerk invective that swirls around this piece of blogging spam like a particularly nasty huey in a centrifuge.

I’ve lost count now of how many times I’ve had this “comment” suddenly leap out of nowhere at me for moderation. Plainly a cut and paste job, it doesn’t change at all.

But bizarrely it does actually link back to a bona fide blog / web site. It is not some yank-phobic computer trying to sell me Viagra. Behind this one-track publicity campaign is a real person. A real person who not only is vociferously swearing off American women himself but feels so passionate about the ill-health effects of dating American women that he wants us all to swear off them too.

Why should we boycott American women? Well, visit this guy’s web site and allow him to count the ways. No, I am not going to link to it – a basic Google search will no doubt encourage this particular floater to rise to the top of the toilet – and I suspect I am merely asking for trouble just by giving this dope free publicity by writing about it on my blog.

I just want him to stop proselytizing his [frankly] bigoted, sexist, chauvinistic, primitive creed on my blog. Not that he reads my blog, you understand, he just sees it as a gratis advertising platform for his own ego-rotting vendetta against the female members of his own community. And I object to that. To be honest, I’d much rather collude in the selling of fake Viagra or Russian mail order brides than participate is this guy’s “I’ve got a really small dick” smokescreen. And no that isn’t an invitation to the Viagra companies and the Kremlin to get me to play business footsie with them under the table.

Now, as it is, I have never dated an American woman and am not ever likely too (when I was in the market for Cheryl Ladd I was only 10 years old and now that I’m old enough I suspect she is too old to care for the idea). I am a happily married man. But every time I get one of Mr Boycott’s missives (is his first name Geoff? I’d love it if it was) I feel an almost overwhelming desire to go out and speed date Sigourney Weaver, Natalie Portman and Heather Graham all in one night. Just to be bloody perverse.

‘Cos this guy’s campaign is just not working. It is risible. It is sad. It speaks volumes about this guy’s inevitable loss of esteem, secret low self worth and perhaps a doomed date with a busty Valley Girl who took one look at this guy’s shrivelled Empire State Building and laughed so hard her retainer shot out of her mouth and performed an impromptu vasectomy.

This to me is the only explanation for this guy’s bizarre standpoint. Given enough time and money I could probably prove it empirically.

So to be short, my plan is to boycott Boycott American Women. And I’d like to invite you all to do the same. Not by infecting your blog with my manifesto but by using my own blog to exercise my own freedom of speech. Just as this guy is entitled to do on his own blog. Because, at the end of the day, he can write what the hell he likes on his blog. I just don’t want it on mine. I don’t want it foisted on me to the point where I have to take action to remove it again and again and again.

And to all you American women out there... I’m sure it would have worked. The sex would have been great (once I’d got you properly trained), the good times they would have rolled and we would have made beautiful non-Justin Bieber-music together... but the fact is, I’m married.

This isn’t a boycott. I’m just honouring the precepts of true love.

And as for reasons not to date American women go, that’s possibly the best reason there is.

My Bloody Valentine

Logistics is big business these days. You know: getting an item from A to B. B preferably being the address that has been stamped all over A. It is surely an indication of how advanced we have become as a society that we can send an item half way around the globe in 24 hours and deliver it to a specific postal code in the middle of nowhere. Talk about precision bombing of the friendly sort.

So. Logistics then. It’s an amazing concept. A global concept.

And we’ve all heard of a few of these companies that specialize in logistics. FedEx. DHL. Erm... and some others.

We are all dependent on them at some point. We are all pinpoints in the vast logistical web that is the human race; part of the logistics network in a mostly passive sense.

We wait for these guys to find us and render unto us that which someone else has deigned to make ours.

Things like Valentine’s Day presents.

My wife bought me one of those this year – as she does every year.

I have yet to receive it. It has yet (at the time of writing) to be delivered. Because the logistics people can’t seem to get their heads around the simple logic of reading an address label and assigning the package to a correct delivery route or even – and this makes me gasp – finding the right package with the right name and address on it.

I do not yet know what my Valentine’s present is. Only that my wife is as cheesed off as I am that we are still waiting for it to arrive. She has, bless her, bought me a second extra present to keep me going in the interim so you could argue I have benefitted from this balls up. But that isn’t the point, is it?

The first attempt to deliver the package was a non starter. DHL subcontracted the delivery to a local logistics company who, ironically, were located a mere mile away from my house. If I’d known this at the time I could have walked round to the depot. I wish I had. They’ve “lost” the package. Not that they’re admitting to this, mind. It has been “loaded onto one of their vans for delivery”. This status was apparently flagged up on the 16th February. So, I can only assume the driver is coming to my house via The Maldives and will arrive as soon as he can get someone to haul his van off the coral reef.

My wife rang and notified the vendor who were as cheesed off as we were. They sent out a second version of the item express delivery. This time DHL would deliver it themselves personally.

They didn’t. They called when my wife and I were both at work (surely a common occurrence these days), didn’t try the neighbours who were all in and took the parcel all the way back to their depot in Sutton effing Coldfield which is miles away from my house. It is not a part of the world either of us are familiar with so we did not fancy having to drive all that way, with the kids in tow, after a hard day at work. Could we come at the weekend? No. They are closed Saturday and Sunday. So if you are working parents you are pretty well stuffed.

We opted to have the package delivered to my place of work. I had to email them to do this – or so the automated telephone message informed me. I did so. I gave them every piece of information that a true logistics-head could want. Things like my name and my work address; the delivery code of the item, the original address, the service route, my mobile phone number, etc. Everything.

Yesterday DHL delivered the wrong package to my place of work. A package not addressed to me, with not my name on it and looking nothing like the package my wife had bought for me. Gregory Beavis if you’re reading this... I apologize for the delay of the delivery of your own package. It is currently in my possession.

Cue tightly voiced phone call to DHL (once I’d navigated the automated telephone firewall and actually got to speak to a living breathing half-thinking human being). Cue many apologies.

They could see straight away what they had done wrong. They had delivered the wrong package. They had not delivered the right one. This from a logistics company whose whole raison d’être is to deliver packages to the addresses printed on them.

Apparently they’re going to call again today and we are going to swap packages. Kind of like a dodgy drugs deal at an international airport. Only this time, I hope, without further foul ups.

I am not holding my breath.

I guess the moral of the story is this: if you want to guarantee that something is delivered to some specific person in some specific place you’d better bloody well start walking now and deliver it yourself.

Trust me; it’s the only logical thing to do.

William Wallace Has Stolen Our Presents

I have in the past gloated about the ease by which one can perform online shopping, the effortlessness of one-click ordering which at this seasonal time of the year means one doesn’t have to wade through the insulated body fat and BO of thousands of fellow Christmas shoppers as they fight to grab the last Toy Story 3 DVD from off the shelves.

But it has its drawbacks. Particularly in a wussy country like the UK which describes moderate snow fall as “unprecedented” and “unexpected” despite there having being snow in some form or other for every one of my 41 years in this country and the weather forecasters actually getting their predictions uncannily accurate for this year (anyone would think there is some kind of science behind this meteorology shit).

A whole heap of presents that Karen and I have ordered through Amazon and other online shopping companies are currently stuck in a post office distribution warehouse in Fife. This despite them being ordered in the last week of November so they’d be dispatched – ha ha ha – in plenty of time for Christmas.

It is now 10 days to go until the big day and things are getting down to the wire. The parcels show no sign of moving. I hear rumours of the postal service being so inundated it’ll take them weeks to work through the backlog (‘cos this level of post during the Christmas period is undoubtedly unprecedented too, right?) plus as most Post Office’s these days are down to one delivery per day anything that doesn’t get delivered for that day gets taken back to the PO and left for the next day where the same thing happens over and over again... or so I’ve been told.

Now, short of invading Scotland and grabbing our parcels ourselves there is little we can do. Karen has emailed Amazon but, to be honest, once the parcels have left their distribution centre they are in the hands of the Post Office gods who in turn are at the mercy of the weather.

And there’s more snow on the way apparently – end of this week and all through Christmas.

The kids have been primed that they might not get all their presents on the day this year. They seem fine with it but, let’s be honest, getting an IOU instead of a brand spanking new PlayStation game just isn’t the same thing.

And I daresay this scenario will be a very common one up and down the country this year. We won’t be alone in our present want.

It’s saddening. Very saddening.

But mostly it’s annoying. Annoying that it takes so little for the various services of this country to breakdown and grind to a complete and utter halt.

But I guess I should be used to it by now because, let’s face it, such breakdowns in service in themselves are hardly what anyone could describe as unprecedented. The wind blows from an unexpected direction in the UK and everyone wails and takes to their beds to recover from the immense shock.

I strongly suspect that lying at the bottom of all these abandoned parcels is a very special package indeed. Something this country has long mislaid and long forgotten is missing. It’s backbone.

If William Wallace wanted to invade now he could just wait for a light drizzle of snow and walk it.

And if he can bring my presents with him when he comes he’ll be sure to receive a right royal welcome at my house.

Didn’t You Get My Message?

Read receipts.

Evidence of extreme efficiency or a level of neurosis that should be treated with industrial strength horse tranquilizers?

I only ask because I received an email this week that bullied me into sending a read receipt when I opened it, prodded me to send another receipt when I closed it and then poked me to send yet another when I deleted the damned thing.

It wasn’t even an important email. The message was totally banal.

The security of this nation did not depend on me reading this email. Neither were billions of pounds in global investments riding on its arrival in my Inbox.

Why the panic? Why would someone give a shit about me deleting it?

Did they erupt into hysterical sobs when they got that particular receipt? He... he deleted it?! He deleted it! I can’t believe it! How could he do such a thing...? Is the originator of the email going to be found hanging from a lampshade in their office, life extinguished by the plastic flex to the kettle? Is their death going to be on my hands?

I don’t want this responsibility.

I just want to receive emails and delete them without having to account for my actions. After all, once they’re in my Inbox they’re mine and I can do what I bloody well like with them. I’ll delete them, forward them, reply to them – sometimes even maliciously modify them – as and when I see fit.

Who invited the email Nazi’s to the party anyway?

I mean when you post a letter to someone you don’t ring them up and ask have you opened it yet? Do you? You don’t demand to know if they’ve binned the envelope or worse still run the letter through the shredder. Why all this panic about emails?

Plainly it is a case of some kind of inferiority / superiority complex. I send you an email and refuse to relinquish control of it. I demand to know every stage of its journey and I demand to know exactly what you do with it. Because I refuse to be ignored. You will acknowledge my email. You will acknowledge the reading and the deleting of it. You will acknowledge me, me, me and the power I have over you.

Bullshit.

The sender has requested a read receipt be sent when the message is read. Do you want to send a receipt? Yes / No.

No.

No. No. Effing no.

I think you’ll find that it is me – me, me, me – who truly has the power...

Post Rally

I was presented with an amazing document this morning. One of those documents that makes your head actually hurt with amazement and gives rise to the possibility that sheer disbelief could actually be fatal.

I can’t say too much about this document as – now that my blog has been “outed” (without my permission) at my place of work – I find that I’m officially bound to so many draconian security policies and secrecy clauses that your average Spook would get a hard-on just feeding the relevant files into the paper shredder.

Suffice it to say this document was a full and unexpurgated description of how to address an envelope properly. To make it efficient and cost effective and to ensure that it is indeed essential to the running of the corporate business machine because if it is none of these things it should not be allowed to infect the pristine arteries of the UK postal system which, as we all know, is the lifeblood of all business...

And it had a diagram – a graphic of such austere and precise geometry that it resembled Hitler’s plans to invade Poland – which showed the reader (should he be in any doubt) of the exact right way to lay out an envelope. I wish I could show it to you but I dare not lest the long knives come for me by night and present me with a well cratered wall and a blindfold.

The place for the stamp was clearly marked (the Royal Mail indicia zone). The place for the address was similarly indicated. The place for the company logo or as it shall henceforth be known “the indicia zone” was also carefully demarked (in battleship grey).

But there was more. Each zone was officiously stamped with a blood red letter of the alphabet which rather ingeniously married up with the same in an information key below the diagram which further expounded on the machine-like genius that underpinned this whole postal blitzkrieg.

But best of all the bare and empty no-man’s zone between all these other zones was also clearly illuminated. Illuminated no less by vicious cross hatching that practically goose-stepped across the page and brooked no protest or defiance. Achtung! Zis ist ver you shall not go, Englisher pig-dog! Ve require your utter und total surrender!

Even now I am desperately trying to furnish myself with a ruler, a set-square, a protractor, an octant and a micrometer in order that I may, from this day forth, correctly align any future envelope furniture in a manner most befitting of this New World Order.

That noise, dear reader, is the sound of my highly polished jackboots snapping together.

Next week I look forward to a missive from my Kommandant that will clearly prescribe the correct procedure for applying paperclips to multi-page documents and which precise setting to use on the corporate A4 hole-punch. My desk shall be tidy und laid out according to laser plumb line. Und my post-it notes shall be applied with an attention to detail und accuracy heretofore only usually located in the heady discipline of precision engineering.

Guten tag meine freunde! Ze new Europe has arrived.