The day has started well. I woke at seven, realised I didn’t need to get up, re-woke at 8.30. Wandered downstairs switched on the computer and deleted 121 old emails. Renewed a society membership, ordered a nice addition to my collection of Sweetheart brooches and reviewed my list of jobs for today. Despite doing three things I have not yet done one of the things on my list. Typical.

I have just tackled the rising mound of paperwork on my desk, most of which is either waste paper or paper for recycling. None of it was the bit of paper I was hoping for, which is the penalty you pay for filing everything in one large pile and turning it over periodically.

Next, I started with National Savings and Investments. It’s a government organisation which handles savings and investments. Are you with me so far? It does nor, it seems, answer questions. When I ask it “How do I register online?” it tells me that it is new to the job and asks that I rephrase the question. It is either a robot, a misnamed artificial intelligence system or an idiot. The best suggestion it could come up with when I said “Yes please, I would like to talk to a person.” was that I should contact one of the team on Facebook or Twitter. Because nothing says “security” like discussing financial questions on a social media platform.

Misogyny

The part of my brain which keeps my language to a level suitable for use on a public blog is bulging and threatening to break, unleashing a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse and outdated vocabulary from a different era. Of the two, the world seems to take the latter much more seriously. Call someone a word that requires asterisks in polite company and nobody bothers, because that sort of language is all over TV. Call someone a moron and if the wrong person sees it you will be categorised as being on a lower level than a child molester or a Nazi.

At least I learned a new word today – cisheteropatriarchy. It means the dominance of cisgender heterosexual men. Cisgender, in case you haven’t been keeping up with modern doublespeak, is people that are the same gender as the one they were born with.

And with that, I will leave the blog. To stay longer would be to risk saying something with its roots in the mid-twentieth century.

It’s time to go anyway. Julia has just rung for a lift. It took three attempts to connect to her call because there is so much choice on this new phone. In the old days you only had one button and you only needed one try.

Change is easy, as people often say, but Improvement is hard.

Sexist stereotyping

I used the old postcard pictures I used to use for “humour” and changed them to depict modern concerns. Not sure if that makes me a sexist, misogynist, a hypocrite or a dinosaur.