Sideswipe

Women who plan to see Pride and Prejudice with the men in their lives in the hope of a mushy romantic evening might want to reconsider, warns a reader. "I was chatting with my husband on the way home one night about the new film and the 1995 BBC series," she says. "He asked: 'Did that have Emma Thompson in it?' No, I said, that was Sense and Sensibility. 'Was it Hugh Grant then?' No, that was also Sense and Sensibility. I explained to him that Sense and Sensibility starred Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant, the BBC TV series of Pride and Prejudice starred Colin Firth, and that the new movie stars Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen. Husband's response was: 'Which one was Jane Austen in?' This is why I am going to see Pride and Prejudice with another woman."

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A telemarketer gets the better of Neville Rykers of Te Atatu South: "Tele-marketers tend to phone your home in the golden hours of relaxation - between 5pm and 7pm. One night, having dealt with two calls in a reasonably polite fashion, I received a third call. I told the caller to 'Get lost' and hung up. Two minutes later the phone rang again. The same voice said. 'Good evening, you prick! I just wanted to have the last laugh.' He laughed, and so did I."

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From an electronics company's customer service phone log:

Caller: Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?

Operator: I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about.

Caller: On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?

Operator: I think you mean the telephone point on the wall.

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A daughter writes: "I think your piece about the tech support person getting fired was the result of my mother. It sounds like something only she could do. I left her unsupervised for the day with my fax machine and when I returned home she was sitting beside it inserting a fax she was sending her sister (another person as technically savvy as her). She complained that it wasn't working, she had been putting it in all day and it kept coming back out. When I explained that her sister had received it (about 56 copies) she got quite angry with me. Did I know nothing? She made her point by showing me the page with her own handwriting to prove it was coming straight back out. She's talking about getting a mobile phone next. God help us all."