The last few weeks have involved legal threats on behalf of a particularly unpleasant individual who works as a Marketing Manager  in Ireland. Regular readers will recall, back in June 2009 that I received an email from this company which broke their own privacy policy – the Marketing Manager in question had used CC for the addresses instead of BCC – and I made some comments about my personal opinion about his intelligence, professionalism, and general competence.

Over the intervening two years, that Marketing Manager has been in touch once – yes, once – to ask (not tell – ask) me to temper my comments. As it was, I felt perfectly justified in my personal opinion of him, so I didn’t change the content. I did write another post, to show how much nastier I could be, but other readers prevailed upon my common sense, so the post was removed.

Yet this wasn’t enough for our Marketing Manager.

Oh, don’t forget, the post was always open for him to put his own point of view in the comments, or to apologise, or to contact me. In 2 and a half years, this man couldn’t be bothered to put fingers to keyboard and explain or comment. Indeed, he never even bothered responding to my email explaining my position, and that it was all a personal opinion.

Then about three weeks ago, I got a letter by email from Gore Grimes solicitors in Ireland – don’t be mean to them about their website – insisting I retract my comments about the Marketing Manager, because they were untrue, (no, the categorisation of this man as someone who didn’t know what he was doing was utterly true) defamatory, (not really – they were in response to his own error) and malicious. (also not true – although I wish now that they had been)

And so I offered a version of a retraction, which wasn’t accepted. So I’ve put up their version instead, and deleted the posts in question.

I’m not allowed to mention the name of this Marketing Manager. I’m not allowed to identify him – so I’m only describing him by his role. I can’t identify him on any site I control, or any social media I use.

Everything I’ve written on D4D™ is a personal opinion. In nine years, only one person has  complained about what I’ve said about them. Personally I think it’s bizarre for someone to go running to lawyers instead of dealing with an issue themselves. I think that people who work this way should be named and shamed, but I’m not allowed to do so.

Since starting the current contract at the end of May, I have now covered 12,000 miles just in commuting. In short, I know the relevant route enough I could almost sleep-drive the entire thing. Indeed, I have dreamed the commute on a couple of occasions – and believe me, that is no fun at all, because you wake up and have to do the entire damn thing again.

By the end of this contract (at the end of October) I’ll have covered 15,000 miles, just on the commute. And that’s just the driving section – although admittedly the driving part is by far the largest.

12,000 miles is – apparently – the annual mileage for the average driver in the UK, which goes some way to explaining the idiocy of my current commute.

Anyway, one thing that is coming more and more to mind is that I’m probably really pushing my luck when it comes to not having any form of accident involving another vehicle. (Which neatly avoids the time I spagged the car into a fence) I’ve seen the after-effects of plenty, and come damn close to seeing a few happen in front of me, but as yet – touch wood – nothing’s actually happened.

I hope that I can maintain that status through the next month…

It’s just occurred to me that I missed D4D’s 9th Birthday, which was on 9th August.

So yes, bloody hell, I’ve been writing this rubbish (on and off, and currently more off than on) for nine years. Fark.

On the 25th July 2009, I referred to the Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland in derogatory terms.

Following a request from his legal advisers, I am retracting these comments forthwith, and have deleted the original post(s) to reflect this. I apologise for any harm caused.

(This retraction has been approved by Gore Grimes Solicitors. My personal view hasn’t changed, but legal stuff prevails over personal opinion, it seems. Maybe next time he’ll remember about BCC)

For the last month or so, I’ve been having issues with the tendon to my left thumb. I don’t know what the hell I did to it, but it’s been extra-painful.

The GP said it’s apparently tendonitis (or tendinitis, for some reason) and prescribed some weapons-grade anti-inflammatories that have done cock-all.

So I’m due back at the GPs in a couple of weeks, once the anti-inflammatories are finished, and we’ll see what gets said this time.

In the meantime, it has periods of being “OK-ish”, but then there are others where anything at all hurts. And I can’t fucking wait ’til those periods are over and done with.

The more driving I do at the moment, the more convinced I am that travel news on the radio is involved with a totally different planet to the one I’m on.

A case in point :

This morning, the radio announcements were full of bits about the M11 being slow-moving between Junctions 5 and 4. Really slow, totally rigid, etc. etc. And when I got there? A totally clean run through – not even a delay or a dab of the brakes. Nothing.

It’s totally bizarre, and more than a little bit annoying.