Archive for October 2009

Dear Scottish Power

In Rants on 23 October 2009 with 2 comments

Just found on my hard drive: I wrote this let­ter on Janu­ary 22nd 2009, so you can lodge it firmly in the “pro­cras­tin­at­ing” and “bit­ter” cat­egor­ies. I put it in an envel­ope, but I am almost entirely sure I didn’t post it but instead left it by the door, unstamped, and then threw it out when we moved. The issue at hand is the logo below (which, to be fair on myself, I still don’t like) which was unveiled to me atop a huge elec­tri­city bill:

Dear Scot­tish Power,

Thank you very much for my latest bill that arrived this morn­ing. I look for­ward to pay­ing you an extor­tion­ate amount for the pleas­ure of being really quite cold all the time; indeed, I believe I am now in what they call “fuel poverty” and I will take great pride in adding that detail to my CV. Admit­tedly, the cost of heat isn’t entirely all of your fault; my extremely cheap land­lord must also absorb some of the blame for his refusal to have any­thing effect­ive in the flat, like cent­ral heat­ing, gas or a sofa that doesn’t cripple you. But he lives in Aus­tralia, so I sus­pect he has simply for­got­ten what it is to be cold.

Any­way, my real ques­tion is about your lovely new logo. Although the typeface you have chosen makes me a squirm a little, I appre­ci­ate how you have man­aged to use the graph­ics to com­mu­nic­ate your con­cern for the envir­on­ment with the leaf. And I’m tak­ing a leap and assum­ing that the yel­low icon is to rep­res­ent the heat you are sup­posed to sup­ply. How­ever, I’m some­what con­fused about the blue. Is it meant to some­how sym­bol­ise my freez­ing cold fin­gers? Or, as it has some­thing of a teardrop shape, does it rep­res­ent the cry­ing your cus­tom­ers do when they get their bills? I’m being facetious here, but I’m sure you can under­stand my con­fu­sion. Per­haps you now sup­ply water, and it rep­res­ents that? And if you do sup­ply water, didn’t your brand­ing people sug­gest maybe chan­ging your name from Scot­tish Power? Scot­tish Powa­ter has some­thing of a ring about it.

Yours sin­cerely,

Miss Sarah Barrie

Before delivery commences

In Photos and Videos on 17 October 2009 with Comments Off

Ater two weeks, I’m begin­ning to feel human again after a bout of the Death Virus/‘flu/something really quite nasty. It feels like the whole of Octo­ber so far has been spent in a fog of ill­ness, but apart from tired­ness and a marked inab­il­ity to breathe (I’m hor­ribly asth­matic, it turns out. Who knew? Oh, every­one? And I would feel bet­ter if I just took my indus­trial strength inhalers some­times? Oh. Well. I’ll think about it.), the fog is start­ing to lift. I’ve even done things today that don’t involve star­ing into middle dis­tance and for­get­ting what I’m doing, although admit­tedly that was along­side star­ing into space and for­get­ting what I’m doing.

The old pet­rol pump in the photo is just around the corner from the flat, but as it’s on a route we don’t take very often I man­aged to not notice it for almost three months. It’s sur­pris­ing how quickly you stop noti­cing things, even in new places, when you for­get to look and start tak­ing the things around you for granted.

Detail

In Photos and Videos, Projects on 1 October 2009 with Comments Off

I set myself a little pro­ject this morn­ing, and the res­ult is this series of little still lives fea­tur­ing the details of my day and my home (there are more pho­tos on Flickr). Some of the images are stranger than oth­ers — who takes a photo of a bottle of bal­samic vin­egar or a doorhandle? — but the answers give bizarre little insights into who I am and how I live: I add bal­samic to everything (except maybe por­ridge) and I think the old doorhandles are the favour­ite part of my new flat, other than the bath­room and kit­chen win­dows (light!) and shower cur­tain. You prob­ably have to have lived without a shower rail for three months to truly appre­ci­ate the power of a square of clear plastic.

Later, I headed out­side and grabbed a few of the little details from my walk and the area of Edin­burgh that I live in, much to the bemuse­ment of every school-age per­son in the city. I can tell I’m get­ting old because the orange num­ber 8 below? It was stuck to a com­munal bin. And I took a photo of it just to hor­rify the school­girl who had been star­ing at me and my cam­era for the pre­vi­ous few minutes. She’ll prob­ably need coun­selling to get over the sheer hor­ror of it all.