or do other people get enormously pissed off when all sorts of sites insist that you register with them in order to avail oneself of whatever they're offering? I've had it this week with booking several events, with trying to sponsor someone for charity via a giving scheme, and recently, when trying to subscribe to an organisation via PayPal, there ( Read more... )

On a fairly crowded Tube this evening, hot and sticky, tired, a bit achey and with a heavy bag, and generally feeling somewhat cranky, I nonetheless was public-spirited and moved down into the space between the seated passengers.

But as people continued to cluster by the doors, when people were getting on at Camden there was the usual cry of 'move ( Read more... )

Am I coming across as particularly grouchy, touchy hedgehog at the moment? Feel that I am turning into Disgusted Tunbridge Wells, and I don't even live in Tunbridge Wells.

For the last few weeks I seem to be feeling unusually tired, and to be having a number of minor but annoying bodily ailments. (These seem more a consequence of this general ' ( Read more... )

Thirty-plus minute phonecall from family history researcher, the kind where they start out by spilling out a deluge of details about their family and its genealogy, and ascertaining what information they're actually after is left as an exercise for the archivist at the other end of the line. The kind of enquiry that should take five minutes max - ( Read more... )

Furthermore, there was query posted to academic list I'm on about recommendations for reading on [subject] in particular period, with particular reference to women. [Subject] is on the periphery of the kind of stuff I do, and I consider myself reasonably well-informed about the state of the scholarly art relating to it.

This query, or very similar ( Read more... )

Small accumulation of petty annoyances: still fuming from unnecessary and badly written letter from credit card company (hello? I got the statement a week ago and deduced that the cheque I sent the previous month had been lost in the post. Matters in hand, thanks very much. Does the expression 'day late and a dollar short' mean anything to you?); ( Read more... )

My democratic duty done.

Crabby old bat moment on Euston station: Madame, it may be necessary for you to travel during rush hour with a pushchair and several small children; it does not, however, seem to me that it is equally essential to block everyone's access to the down escalator while preparing your troop for their descent.

And in the ( Read more... )

I don't know how it works in all other libraries, but in my experience, telling someone the institutional policy on what may be photocopied and what is not photocopyable, and why their request falls into the latter category, is not an invitation to open a negotiating process involving explaining (begging, pleading, threatening, etc) why we should ( Read more... )

I have been solicited to be part of a live discussion tomorrow on Radio 3 'Nightwaves' to coincide with release of movie Kinsey in UK and publication of TC Boyle's new novel on Kinsey and his circle. This involves going to the press showing in Soho (drinks and sandwiches!!), getting a free copy of book to glance at, and then going to Broadcasting ( Read more... )

Of late I have had a number of emails addressed to me in my professional capacity beginning Dear [firstname] (one of them even managed to misspell this in an unusual, rather than the unfortunately predictable, way) instead of[Appropriate honorific] [surname]. Am I showing my age and being an unnecessary stickler ('Disgusted of North London') by ( Read more... )