Dr Commuter Answers Pop Stars' Questions

 Dr. Commuter writes: Many people find it hard to express their problems in direct, face to face communication with those that can help, and turn instead to the medium of popular song to express their fears and their uncertainties. This medium with its short, repetitive lyrics and undemanding vocal skills (frequently the ability to hit just two notes is sufficient), together with the possibility of significant financial advantage should one's recordings find favour with the public, has produced some of the most searching and important questions of our time. 

Here, then, are my answers to a selection of problems.

1. To Martha - No, I am not ready for a 'brand-new' beat and therefore have no interest in learning any more about what you may be getting up to out of doors. PS Do give my best wishes to the Vandellas.

2.  To Ringo Starr - You already sing out of tune, so asking me what would I do if you were to do so is pointless. I shall do what I always do when any of your songs are played - switch over to the cricket.

3.  To The Who. I am Dr. Commuter, that's who I am

4.  To Dionne Warwick. Turn on to the B439, left at the lights, take the A49 to junction 11 of the M17, proceed to Luton Airport, catch the first flight to Los Angeles then rent a car and ask at the desk for directions. Other routes are available. Don't forget to claim your duty-frees. 

5.  To Various 80's artists. Yes, round about the end of December each year they are aware that it is Christmas but since most of them do not observe it, it is irrelevant. 

6.  To Emile Ford. I was not making eyes at you or anyone else, I happened to be suffering from a mild infection that just makes them look a bit swollen and distorted. Pass on my kind regards to the Checkmates.

7.  To Rod Stewart. No. 

8. To Jackie Trent. I'm over here. Here, by the door, The bloke waving his arm. Put your distance glasses on. At last. OK, waiter, she made it, let's have some drinks.

9. To Simon & Garfunkel. No, not this year, you see the car's playing up, there are road works on the B348 and I'm a bit worried about the parrot. But you guys go, have a good time, don't worry about me, bring us back a stick of rock.

10.  To Dion. You're not in love. You are merely experiencing sexual desire and frustration because the object of your affections is not interested. It happens to all of us. Grow up and get over it. If you happen to see any of the Belmonts, one of them still owes me for a cup of tea.

11. To David Bowie. Probably not, unless you mean certain molecular structures able to survive in ice for thousands of years until a mild warming enables some chemical activity. But no little green men, that's right out.

12. To Peter Sarstedt. Being a busy consultant and advisor is not all work, you know. I sometimes go down the Red Pony, other times I may be found at Haringey Dog Track. I have been known to frequent Achmed's All-Nite Arcade & Fish Bar. It all depends. Anyway, I see no reason why I should account to you for my movements, you never tell me what you do.

13. To Patti Page. That one is £275, beautiful eyes eh, yes it's house-trained, lovely temperament. Too much? Well, I've got a gerbil in a box but he's getting on a bit, let you have him for a fiver, ok?

 

Dr. Commuter cannot enter into correspondence, unless in accord with the Terms & Conditions, details of which may be obtained by phoning at 8:00am and joining a queue, only to be told every two minutes that you could do it all online even though you can't, that you are number 83 in the queue and then being cut-off after 42 minutes.

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Editor's spoiler alert

If you really must know the source of the questions, scroll down to see the 'hot waxings' referred to: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Dancing in the Streets
2. With a Little Help from my Friends
3. Who Are You?
4. Do You Know The Way to San Jose?
5. Do They Know It's Christmas?
6. What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?
7. Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
8. Where Are You Now, My Love?
9. Scarborough Fair
10. (Why Must I Be)  A Teenager in Love?
11. Life on Mars?
12. Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?
13. How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?

 

Stringing Along a Scammer

I received a friend request on Facebook from my cousin in Florida. Unexceptional, you may think, but I am already friends on Facebook with her. Just to make sure I had not unfriended her by mistake, I checked the profile and there was nothing there, just two friends. And my cousin was also in my list of friends, same name and photo as what I now had confirmed was a scammer.
 

Naturally I accepted the request and waited to see what would happen. In the past my fishing attempts to reel in live scammers have failed but this time I struck gold ["Caught a fish" might be a better metaphor: Ed].  Here is the transcript of our conversation on Facebook Messenger, scammer is in red, my messages are in black and my comments are in italics

 

How are you doing today?
Great thanks. Hey, you still want that $300 back?
Yes     
His eyes must have lit up

It's ready to go. Just need your bank details.

Did you make use of cashApp   Sure sign of a scammer, wants to use a cashapp because transactions cannot be reversed or cancelled once the money is sent
No, we don't have them in UK, as I explained last time

Did you have any nearby store?
What for? I don't need any groceries


Did you have any nearby store like Saisburys and Tesco or pharmacy?
Yes

Which one did you have?
Asda

Go to the store now and get a STEAM GIFT CARD or APPLE GIFT CARD with the $300     
Standard scammer method if cashapp fails, gift cards are untraceable, he would ask me to scratch off the covering over the serial number and tell him what it was.
 

Now? There are road works all down the Blackpool road.

Get back to me immediately you get to the store did you get that? 

Real loss of control, seems to be using a line from the script where a "technician" claims to have removed viruses from the victim's computer.

 
That's a bit rude Paula. By the way, how is Aunt Margaret - I could get her a Get Well card while I am out  

Time to see how long it takes him to twig that I am on to him.

Okay go to the store now and get the card as well
Scammers always try to hustle their victims, they don't want them talking to anyone who might warn them they are being scammed

 
Or did I mean Aunt Mary? There are so many aunts. Remind me, which was one was Margaret?

Aunt Margaret?
Yes, your aunt. The one you used to spend summers with in Vermont. I think.

Aunt Margaret is doing great, go to the store now before they close did you understand me?
Actually I've had a brilliant idea. I have a hot tip, a real cert on a horse in the 3:30 at Chepstow. It's bound to win. I'll put your money on it and split the winnings. It's 30-1 right now but the odds will go down fast tomorrow. Sound good?  

I was getting tired and, as Messenger has such an unpleasant UI, I didn't want to prolong the chat much more.  I was waiting for him to invent something about dear old Aunty Margaret but he stayed elusive. So I resurrected a a scene from one of my favourite TV sitcoms, Bottom.

Okay
Did he fall for it or was he getting suspicious? 

Have to go, Roger is knocking on the door, he looks real* and he's holding his shotgun, you know what happened last time   *meant to include "mean"

I unfriended at this point; I like to think of him drumming his fingers, dreaming of that $300 and praying that this time Roger keeps the safety catch on.

Brexit Betrayed!

 

source: Euronews

 

 

 

This is a very black day, my friends. Seven years ago did we not vote overwhelmingly to reject our membership of foreign conspiracies, as typified by the so-called European Union? Yes, we did. We resolved to have no further truck with people who speak non-British languages and who believe in working hard for a living. We had been gulled by them for too long. And at the heart of our rejection of all things continental was membership in the huge con-trick that is the so-called Horizon programme. 

Horizon is, as we all know, the name of a BBC science programme. There is no such thing as an EU Horizon project, other than as a fig-leaf to cover the huge fraud of lots of money being paid to so-called scientists to do so-called "research". Now what has EU research ever discovered? Gravity? No, that's one of ours. Mr Newton got there first. The Internet? - step forward Sir Tim. The first planet that cannot be seen by the naked eye? Uranus, found by Herschell (Don't be fooled by the name, our Bill was as British as the royal family). The railway engine? - British engineers, working here in Britain, designed them and built them and operated them and were the first to invent the extensive delay, please use alternative horse-and-cart replacement service. 

What did the Europeans do? Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, that's what. "I 'ave no idea where ze electron is or 'ow to measure eet, but if you give me €€€ I will 'ave another look".  Planck's length, a tiny bit of wood that is useless except as a doorstop in a doll's house. Gõdel and his incompleteness theorem "Alright, it's not finished but the van broke down, I ran out of differential equations, the tensor conversion matrix broke, but it'll be done by Tuesday, honest". What a shower. 

We must stay true to the fundamental principles of Brexit  and the immortal declaration that "we have had enough of experts" (M Gove, a true thinker who says it like it is). We've got plenty of crumbling schools and empty office blocks, far more than we need to house all the scientists in Britain. We don't need to spend money - when Roger Bacon and the Earl of Sandwich collaborated, was any public cash involved? No - and there is certainly no need for our brave boys and girls to share any of their precious data with the jabbering masses across the Channel, nor to bother trying to read anything they produce (which of course won't be in English so what's the point?). We stood alone in 1940 and we can stand alone again.

Sizzling in September

 I record from time to time the less usual weather events that have affected me, hitherto in beautiful Ruislip but now I must switch focus to my new home in rural Warwickshire. A few warm days in September, often following a cooler period, are nothing new, indeed we have come to expect them. This week is one step beyond. It began warming up at the weekend and late afternoon temperatures have reached some 28c here, 31.5c in London, and will be at this sort of level until the end of the week. It is probably down to the jet stream, kinks in which gave us a scorching June, a cool and wet July and a fairly nondescript August. Europe, as usual, has it worse - Paris is expected to see 36c in a day or so.

It has rained so much in recent weeks that the countryside, I am delighted to report, is blooming. The fields are as a lush a shade of green as I can remember. That is, the pastures - arable fields have been harvested and are brown with a covering of whitish stalks. Huge dust clouds were blowing off one as I drove up the M40 yesterday, having had to pop back to London for an eye test.

Funny thing, returning to the place I lived for nearly 30 years, after three tranquil weeks in our new home. Ruislip seemed so much busier and noisier than I remembered. High Street was choked with traffic, and the stink of diesels and the snarl of the fast-food delivery motorbikes seemed overwhelming. Yes, there are many more shops and other facilities than are on our doorstep here but I don't really miss them. When my appointment was over and I was back on the road, it felt as if I was going home, not leaving it.

 

Waiting for the Rozzers

 A nasty little letter popped through the letterbox in our new home. It was from the TV Licensing people, addressed to "The Legal Occupier" and claiming that, because no-one had answered their enquiries, they were going to send round "an Officer" who might visit any day of the week, morning or evening, to see if we were watching anything we should not be.

Obviously the previous letters had not been answered because there was no occupier. This is a new-build house on a new estate. One might have thought the licencing people might realise that, but clearly no. In their eyes, the second the final decorator leaves with a cheery "All finished, mate", the licence-dodgers crowd in around the telly and gleefully devour EastEnders, bathed in the warm glow of not having paid for a licence. 

As it happens I do have a licence, transferred from my old address. But I have no way of telling the licencing people. The letter, signed by a Jane Jeffers, Enforcement Manager, Birmingham, has no address, phone number, email or any other contact details. Indeed, I have no evidence that Ms Jeffers exists at all ¹and she may be simply the name given to a stuffed doll residing on top of the cupboard in the Enforcers' Lounge somewhere in that grim Brummie office block. Therefore I can do nothing but wait the arrival of the Officer, whom I shall warmly greet, show off my TV and inform that "Yes, we watch it all the time, young sir, but really standards have slipped since that nice Michael Fish retired, what are are you going to do about that?"

And when he smiles his evil, gotcha, smile and reaches for his clipboard, I shall casually add "By the way, would you like to see my licence?". The light will fade from his slitted eyes, his fingers will twitch, the stub of pencil will drop to the floor and he will sigh a long and disillusioned sigh. "It's all right", I will add reassuringly "Ms Jeffers knows all about it, but it was not possible to tell you before your long journey from Birmingham because, as you know, she does not make it possible for anyone to contact her".

And he will grind his tea-stained teeth and take a deep breath and begin packing up his detecting equipment, muttering about "always the last to know, bloody head office" and probably won't even touch the biscuit I was offering. Just as well though, month-old Jammie Dodgers do go a bit soft.

1.  Update - I searched for Jane on the web and found a post, very similar in tone to mine, written a couple of years ago. But the author of this piece lives in Wales and his letter (or indeed, letters, for he has received several) are signed Jane Jeffers, Enforcement Manager, Cardiff. Was she promoted after her excellent work in Cymru, or was it a sideways move? Had she made too many enemies and was being placed out of harm's way? Or does she cover both regions? 

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