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Blimey

So the ten thousand mark has been reached, and in a moment of literary cleverness I arranged things so that the ten thousandth word would be "landmark", clever old me. Actually, it's playing little games like that with yourself which help you keep going.

But you're not really reading Coastalblog for news of how NaNoWriMo is going, are you? You want rants about how stupid people are. And, just for you...

WHY DO PEOPLE WITH INCREDIBLY SIMPLE NAMES FEEL THE NEED TO SPELL THEM FOR ME WHEN MAKING A BOOKING?

"That's a table for Mr Ball"
"Absolutely"
"That's B-A-L-L"

I mean it's infuriating, even more irritating than people who book under their first name which assumes that you know who they are or, for that matter, care. In this past week I have had the following names spelt out to me over the phone. Ball. Brown. Smith. Green. JONES for fuck's sake, as if I could possibly mistake that for anything else. Conversely a Mrs Kieslowski didn't feel the need. I have developed a couple of strategies for dealing with compulsive spellers of names. I either ask them to repeat themselves until it stops being amusing:

"That's G-R-E-E-N"
"Sorry what?"
"G-R-E-E-N"
"Nope, didn't quite get that, sorry?"

Alternatively finish the conversation with a simple "Ok sir. That's O-K." Makes me feel a bit better.

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