Postal orders

Postal orders, it turns out, are clinging on to life. The Night Mail, though? No.

2021

2021 was going to be a much better year than the last one. Or so we told ourselves…

The humble typewriter

These machines came with no grammar correction, no spell checker, definitely no autocorrect, no language diplomacy. You needed to consider your choice of words carefully. After all, you only got one go.

Non-predictive text

We live in the days of “Damn you, Autocorrect!” Back in the 1990s, we had to press a key four times just to get a single letter.

Consignia

I wonder why I am thinking of Consignia? Ah, the latest Post Office scandal wraps up in the High Court…

The busy signal

The busy signal told you something. Voicemail tells you a lot less.

StayatHome1

Back in the spring, in the UK, we had our first lockdown to bring the coronavirus under control. We never dreamed we’d have another. That’s why we never gave StayAtHome a number. Until now.

Knowledge organised in random alphabetical chunks

In 2012, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that, after 244 years, fifteen editions and selling more than 7 million sets of its volumes, it was going out of print. The 32 volumes and 44 million words of the 2010 edition were its last.