I received a reply to a work-related email this morning, beginning “hello Marsden”.
Clearly the person just made a mistake, despite me having signed my email “Rhodri”. But it's amazing how an error like this immediately puts you on the offensive. No matter how charming, polite and well written the text below might have been, I was already imagining the sender as some vicious wielder of authority, likely to bellow SILENCE! if I dared to disagree with any of the points that were being made. I wrote three incredibly stroppy email replies – including one that returned the insult, beginnning with the phrase “Hello, Perkins,” – which I quite liked, I must say, as for one fleeting moment it gave me the brazen confidence of a man who employs a chauffeur. But in the end I deleted the lot and just wrote a normal reply, explaining carefully which way round my names go.
In Hungary, surnames come first. If you introduce yourself, you say “Marsden Rhodri I am.” Maybe that's what Daily Mail readers mean, when they talk about backward Eastern European countries.
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Good old . A live review in the NME, today. May there be many more. Sadly, they have to play in Chelmsford tonight, to balance things out and ensure they don't get too big for their boots.


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