Check Your Nectar Points

Several times 'bonus' points, although included in the total shown on the till receipt for the day I earned them, have not been included in future totals.

For instance my points total just after shopping on 21 August when I earned 150 bonus points, was 5896, but when I did some more shopping the following day my receipt showed 'Previous Points Balance' at only 5746, so the bonus of 150 had disappeared.

I advise all readers to keep receipts for a few days and to compare one day's closing balance with the following day's opening balance.

The Return of the Intrusive 'h'

It used to be common for people to preface with an additional 'h' some words that begin with a vowel. Dropping an 'h' was considered a sign of incomplete literacy, so people anxious to keep up appearances often added an extra 'h' here and there just be on the safe side.

I remember quiet amusement at school when our Latin teacher once referred to 'Annibal crossing the Halps'

For several decades the intrusive 'h' was rare. The only example I noticed was when a friend called his dog 'Aristotle'. When that was abbreviated to 'Ari' it soon changed to 'Hari', but that was not a typical case because of the understandable confusion with 'Harry'.

Just recently I've detected a minor revival of the intrusive 'h' in the name of the letter itself. In a television advertisement 'aitch' has been mispronounced as 'haitch'.

Is Annibal about to cross the Halps again?

A Modest Achievement

As I age, I rejoice in increasingly minor triumphs.

Just now I'm feeling quite pleased with myself because I've sorted through and filed a heap of papers in my out tray. Some of them had been there for two years.

Well done Ancient Richard :-))

Microsoft's Counting

I have encountered many versions of MS Windows, and have heard tell of even more, so I decided to work out how many.

In the early days there was a simple numbering, Windows 1, 2 and 3.

Then it became more complicated. I recall the following:

(4) Windows 95
(5) Windows 98
(6) Windows 2000
(7) Windows Millennium Edition
(8) Windows XP
(9) Windows Vista
(10) Windows 7
(11) Windows 8
(12) Windows 10

Did I miss a Windows 9 ?

Rejoicing in Email

I used to be an avid letter writer, but even then I tended to forget to post letters. Unless I posted them at the very  beginning of my excursion to the shops, or to work, I usually forgot all about them until I returned home to find them still in my shopping bag.

Emails are so much easier to send and to manage than letters, that I use the post only very rarely. When I do I find it even harder than before to remember to post. Even though I pass a post box on my way to the shops I often pass it by, lost in thought, with someone's birthday card still in my shopping bag.

Living without the Internet would be horrid.

Perilous Pomegranates.

In my youth it was quite an adventure to eat a pomegranate, easing out the seeds one by one, so I was quite disappointed to see packets of pomegranate seeds for a sale in a supermarket.

Persephone was condemned to spend four month of every year in the underworld because she unwisely ate four pomegranate seeds during an involuntary visit there. Had she been offered a packet of seeds already extracted, she might have eaten enough to condemn her to permanent residence in the nether regions, condemning the world to perpetual Winter, so we muth be grateful she did not have access to a supermarket.