And Then I Needed To Call A Bit Of HMG….

Today I needed to make a telephone call to a government department relating to a simple matter that, it being HMG, could possibly, probably, transpire to be a complicated matter.

Been there? What will I be confronted with? It's usually a slow morale breaking grind of hurdles, ankle height trip wires, worstly, neck cutting, invisible wires, hidden pits full of those sticky-up pointy poles, mine fields, mind tricks and trick composite questions.

In most cases, however well prepared you be for these forays into officialdom, there's generally one last, impossible to understand question that, without the correct answer you cannot progress and you'll be disconnected 'till you work out what they want. While you figure out what they want, they're busy relocating the cutty wires and pits of pointy poles. Been there?

The clip below, I feel, is a fare representation, in my experience, of the folk our government find for 'dealing' with the public;

So, bright and early, with the miss-guided and crazy notion that I'll be first in line and so avoid hours on hold waiting with Wagner wailing down the line, I prepared my digit and did the dialling with a sinking heart and an overwhelming sense of trepidation.

You know what? I got straight through to whom {who?} I needed to talk to and ten minutes later, rather than the expected ten hours, I was sitting there, actually, here, looking at the hung-up phone in happy and amazed amazement.

My work there was done. Done with tremendous help from the other end, 'the other end' being the government end, and with absolutely no trips, traps, pointy poles or impossible questions encountered whatsoever. Is that cool or wot?

There you go then, they CAN do it.

Quote; M. Bradbury and C. Bigsby.

Helen; What were you lecturing on in India?
Patterson: Harold Pinter and the failure of communication.
Helen; How did it go?
Patterson; I don't know. They didn't seem to understand a word I said.