THE NUMBERS GAME

[Stanley]

THE NUMBERS GAME

27 October 2004

I was listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning about the development of telephones in Britain. It was both depressing and amusing. Depressing because they were describing the manual, operator-based system of my youth as though it was Stone-Age technology and amusing because of the astonishment of the young people on the programme that such a human based system could ever work.
Button ‘A’ and button ‘B’ hold no mysteries for me of course, I was brought up with them. Funnily enough I came up against the old system not so many years ago when I had to make a call to a person on the west coast of Ireland. When I rang the number a lady answered and told me that unfortunately the exchange was closed but if I left a number with her she would make sure that the person I was calling was aware of the fact and would call me back. I found out later that the exchange was in the local grocery shop and that as the regulations said that they closed down at a certain time, I think it was 7pm, the lady didn’t use the phone but got on her bike and cycled three miles to the remote cottage where my friend was staying and told her to ring me in the morning when the exchange opened. As far as I am aware, Subscriber Trunk Dialling has reached even those remote regions by now.
The old system had its advantages. In 1962 when I was tramping on ‘A’ Licence for a living I was in the North of Scotland on a wet and stormy night heading south with ten tons of seed potatoes and a wife at home who was falling to bits with our second daughter, Susan. We hadn’t got a phone at home so I rang the local pub, the Greyhound, hoping one of my mates could pop up to the farm where Vera was in labour and finding out what was going on. The operator couldn’t get through but told me where the next phone box was on the road and said if I rang the operator they would tell me if they had got any news.
Three telephone boxes later on a wet and wild mountain top in Inverness the operator told me I had a daughter and mother and child were doing well! I didn’t even have to pay for the call. I doubt if today’s system could cope with a situation like that. I digested the news, wondered why I was on a mountain in a storm getting this news, went back into the telephone box, rang my employer on a reverse-charge call and handed my notice in but that’s another story.
Later this morning I decided that I had better set up valid security numbers and PIN numbers for my credit and debit cards as they are becoming essential in this security conscious age. I was on the phone for 30 minutes dealing with voice mail and security matters and the upshot is that they will send me new numbers and I have to go to a hole in the wall to change them to the ones I want. It’s all so complicated and whilst I understand the security reasons for it I can’t help reflecting that whoever set up the system for making the changes gave no thought at all to the needs of the people who would be accessing the service. Anyone with bad eyesight, mild dyslexia or another disablement would have great difficulty getting through this process. The lady at Barclaycard was brilliant but I’m afraid the superior young man at HSBC was having great difficulty hiding his contempt for anyone who had the temerity to ask him to repeat something he had said.
I suppose I’m demonstrating my age here but I don’t think this affects my assessment that the world is becoming a more complicated and bewildering place. I can see the point in twenty years where I will just give up playing their game. Another point that amused me was that after getting you to establish a complicated password or security number you are advised not to write it down! How the hell are you supposed to remember all these items if you don’t keep a record somewhere? My solution to this has been to base all the required numbers on my old army number, something I doubt if I will ever forget. Somewhere in the synapses of my brain there is a titanium link which is deeply engraved with this number and when that goes there isn’t much hope for any of the others.
So, like it or not, for the foreseeable future I shall have to play the numbers game. This doesn’t mean I like it but without it I shall be shut off from a large part of my world’s financial services. A small but annoying price to have to pay. Or is it just me?

27 October 2004