Slack Jawed Babbling

Always – no, never – set up an Out Of Office message. Because although it might be good, even required, practice in some quarters, the execution can go horribly wrong. I know. In the Summer of 2015, I managed to send out about a billion or so automated messages. By accident, of course. I’m not really sure how this happened. Something to do with the way I applied the filters, I believe. Even the polite little warning from Apple, saying “Are you sure?” didn’t alert me. About 30 seconds after clicking to activate, I realised that I had sent an e-mail about my holiday plans in reply to every e-mail in my work in-box. I’d sent an apology text to those that got the most. Brian said ‘”Just the 300-odd!” and Andy said “Don’t worry. Just replying to them all now”. There were a couple of unexpected consequences. Some colleagues I hadn’t been in touch with for ages replied “I think you’ve got a bug. By the way, why don’t we meet up soon?” One guy replied with some useful advice about employme...

By March 2021, the grip of the Winter Coronavirus lockdown was beginning to free up. I was looking to break out some trips to the seaside again. I picked this coastline partly because earlier visits hadn’t done West Sussex much justice. And also because the area is relatively easy to do as a day trip. Bognor was to be the jumping-off point, because I had never been there at all. My most recent visit to the stretch of coast had been Littlehampton further east.   The only redeeming feature of that dull little town on a day in 2015 was a reasonable plate of grub at Osca’s Fish and Chips and a wonderful sky full of brooding thunderclouds heading over to France. Being back on the coast trail for the first time since the previous November gave me a preposterous sense of giddy freedom. The 97 days of Covid-19 restrictions from December to April had felt merciless. Apart from a brief trip in to London for my first Covid jab in February I had not left Berkhamsted since an early-December w...