OK, so I’m a techie – but I love this alarm clock. One of the better ideas I’ve seen recently.

Recently, I’ve been thinking of doing a course with the Open University – which is probably a good thing to do. I know I want to do some kind of course, but not certain yet just what it is I want to do. So I asked for a brochure/prospectus on all the courses, to see what’s around.

Filled in the online form, name, address, age (no idea why, but there we go), all the standard garbage. Get the message back “OK, you should get that in 5 days or so” (I’m paraphrasing). And nothing arrived. I tried again. Still nothing.

So I’ve just called them up, asked why I haven’t received anything. And I got asked “Did you live in Weymouth?” – which I did, about four years ago. I confirm that yes, I had lived there, once upon a time, but now I’d moved. Turns out “the computer system got confused” and has sent both prospectuses (prospectii?) to – you guessed it – my old address.

Now, I didn’t fill in the old address (obviously), I filled in the address I live at now. That’s where I wanted the keffing prospectus sent, so that’s the address I gave them. So why did it send stuff to my old address, just because that’s the one they’ve had on file for four years? Am I not allowed to move? Does the OU want people to stay put for their entire lives, just so it doesn’t keff their database?

And it doesn’t reassure me in the least about doing a course with them. I know I won’t be staying where I am for the next three or four years – it’s an absolute certainty that I’ll move at sometime in that time period. So what happens then? Will I lose the course materials somewhere along the line, because their system doesn’t register that I’ve moved? What’s the deal? And yes, I think there may just have to be a shitty letter off to the OU about the same thing.

Sometimes there are things you see and just have to shake your head, going “did that really just happen?” closely followed *blush* by “I’ll have to put something in the blog about that“.

Today, walking through the concourse of the station, I was stopped dead by the sight of what appeared to be a complete coach-load of nuns in full regalia, heading for a train. The woman at the front of the – what the hell is the collective noun for nuns? – group (that’ll do) was (I assume) the Mother Superior, and she looked like a truly fearsome person, one secure in the knowledge that God is With Her (I capitalise to emphasise the strength of her convictions (can nuns get convictions?)) and Always Would Be. And then there were the 40 or 50 lesser nuns following behind her, two by two, just like a parade of schoolchildren on a daytrip.

But what it made me think of most wasn’t a school trip, but more something out of a US Army film, half expecting one of them to start singing a cadence as God’s Army went out to recce a bunch of sinners. Going out on patrol into a world full of sin and danger. (They were probably travelling on Virgin Trains – sorry, that’s an abysmal pun, I’ve just realised – I was actually referring to the danger, and then thought of… No, it’s fairly obvious, I’ll shut up now.) Anyway, that was what it all made me think of – and it was a bizarre enough sight to make me want to write about it. Well, that and a thought of “I really must buy a little digital camera, for snaps like that”.