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.