RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31400, 20 June 1967, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

CHAGRIN

Each succeeding volume of the Post Office telephone directory brings into the home a fascinating volume for family reading. It may lack a little in lighter touch, but it Is crammed full of facts and, in the hands of the little ones, encourages research and increases the thirst for knowledge. Every child, for instance, should know how to clean the telephone, especially the bit about the inadvisability of dismantling the instrument In our own study of the book, we were very taken by the extraordinary accuracy of the man who wrote the piece about how to use the automatic telephone. His choice of language was superb. He describes the ringing tone as “Burr burr —pause—burr burr” and the busy tones as “buzz—pause—buzz.” We went round practising for a bit to make sure our recognition would be spot on, and then came

to the number unobtainable tone, which is “Pip-pip-pip-pip pause pip-pip-pip-pip.” It all seemed so real. There was some marvellous stuff, too, in the paragraph about making calls. We hope all subscribers will take note and apologise if they call wrong numbers, and use fingers instead of knitting needles in'dialling their numbers.' Incidentally it is a pretty tiring business these days. If you are a Spencerville subscriber calling a friend in Governor’s Bay, you have to dial seven figures. It does say in the book to keep a pencil and paper handy to the telephone. We were reading the telephone book in bed the other night—it was our turn—and had got through all the fine print about the time limit on party-line conversations and the nonpayment of charges when we suffered a really severe disappointment, a real let-

down, in the the “Yellow Pages.” Again there was a clearly defined set of rules and some advice under th heading “When you hav forgotten a firm’s narv ’-uC remember the addrtV-.” Here it said you might want a carrier located in High street The moment we read that—such is the power of the printed word —there was nothing in the world we wanted more than to have a High street carrier send us out a truck. It said that we should first look in the index for the page number for “carriers." We did that. Page 35, our trembling forefinger told us. Then it said, turn to that page and look through the carriers listed for the address you require. And do you know, that in seven columns of carriers THERE WAS NOT ONE IN HIGH STREET? Misleading, it was. Makes one wonder if they put all those telephone numbers down right