Story

I have no idea if this is true, but it would be great if it was. As told to me by a girl at work, about her friend.

The friend had finished Uni and gone travelling for a year, near the end of which her mum came over to meet her in New York to visit. They went shopping. The mum couldn't take any more shopping so she left the girl to it and went back to her hotel. It was evening, and she felt a little intimidated, coming from the English countryside, and being in New York, a very alien territory for her.

She went into the hotel with her shopping and pressed the call button for the lift. The doors opened, and the porter, helpful man that he was, and hoping for a tip, put her shopping into the lift, into which she now felt obliged to enter, accompanied by three large and fierce looking New York hoods; black, of course, as they are the gangsta type ones, a fact well-known by all English Countryside ladies, from the films. The lift doors closed. The lift did not move.

The middle one of the gentlemen leaned over to her and whispered "hit the floor." She threw herself to the floor, saying "please take what you want."

The gentleman said "I meant hit the button for the floor you want."

Apparently, the embarrassment was audible.

A few days later she went to pay the bill and leave. The concierge told her it was paid for, and there was a note.

"Lady, you have made me laugh more than I have laughed recently. Please accept this stay on me."

Will Smith.

The other two guys were his bodyguards.

Please let that be true.

I think this will do

I despair. I have tried many time to compose a reply to this.

I fear that I am bereft of the right words to describe the abysmal attitude which TalkTalk, at all levels, have foisted upon me.

I cannot sensibly reply to a sentence which contains more than one misused reflexive pronoun, nor indeed a reference to an engineer as an individual. Woe is me.

The "exchange to the master socket" paradigm leaves me, as spake the Bard of Avon, "rampoozling in my own juices, for I am wan," because this very fact was revealed to me on Friday last. It is thus far not only eight and forty hours, but thrice so.

I am reluctant to be available to welcome an "engineer", for I am one. I have forty years experience of being in that poorly employ, in the fields of oil, gas and the nuclear industry, and am possibly, as a designer of electronics, software and firmware in such trade, more qualified than any that you could send.

It is most pleasing to note, however, that if it is "deemed" that my service performing to the acceptable level, as made clear by the two iPhones, Kindle Fire and two Personal Computers thereto attached will give evidence, that you will charge me £65.00. It is reassuring to know that shareholder value is at the forefront of the agenda, and this is surely going to bring in more customers.

May I say, at this point, that if you even THINK about charging for the premature termination of your laughable contract, that you are going to make Mr Cameron and that whole pig thing seem quite sensible.

It is such a shame. You were so helpful last time.

I refrain from mentioning the result of paying peanuts, and any reference to species including, but not exclusive to, primates.

Yours with love

Pengy

TalkTalk

The last email I sent to the CEO of TalkTalk, Dido Harding, who has been helpful in the past.

I will let you know what she replies.