Serendipuccino
Oct 29th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
Is when your iPod music matches your mood and you have time and change for a cappuccino and you find, in a copy of The Times kindly left for your perusal, a perfectly delicious little article. A gem. Rummaging in the Times online, later, I find there’s another I hadn’t seen.
I am not a big iPod user but I would hate to take a long flight without one, preferably with the 9V battery pack and some noise cancelling headphones. All you need then is a plane, a cloud, a book and some music. What else? A glass of wine. Legroom. Luggage and a welcome at the other end?
My musical reverie was interrupted by Scotland Yard. Was I alright? Not having an emergency? I had dialed 999, the UK’s emergency number. Yikes.
I apologized, of course. My phone, a Treo 650, was in my pocket and I didn’t lock the keypad before putting it there. Normally it happens automatically. Every so often one reads of the astronomical number of times per year this misdialling of 999 happens. It doesn’t happen, can’t happen, with the Europe-wide number 112 — the equivalent of 911 in the US — but hardly anybody in the UK knows that number. I’ve never seen it advertised here.
I expected a remonstration and it never came. Nothing but the utmost civility and courtesy. British public service at its very best.
It’s too bad that changing 999, iconic as it is, should be taboo. Would 221 be acceptable?
My last chat with the law was outside another coffee shop, also not a hundred yards from 221b Baker Street. Officers in plain clothes were cautioning tourists and locals that leaving phones on the table in front of them was an open invitation to thieves known to operate in the area. Very friendly. Reassuring. Metropolitan Police business cards.
Alas, my phone didn’t have a camera some years ago when my son and I shared a cup of coffee in Baker Street station with Sherlock Holmes. That is, with the between-jobs actor dressed as the great man. He joined us at our table. His uneviable job was to stand outside the Sherlock Holmes museum in costume. He played his part very well. Gave the boy his card with his famous silhouette.
There’s an epidemic of identify fraud related theft in the UK at the moment. The online fraud squad is said to be in hot pursuit of one gang. One hopes the law’s arm will be long enough. With spammers the trail seems impossibly virtual, but the criminals they’re after are here, in person, enjoying lives of crime and perhaps the odd cup of, ahh…. ahem, tea!
