Mr. Brown

The phone rang at home in Dorset. "Mr. Brown" the man on the line said. "No", I said, "Mr. Gordon". We established that he did want to speak to me. He was phoning on behalf of the Royal Mail, about a job I'd applied for. Catie thought he may have got confused because of the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. An easy mistake to make you might think! - at that time the PM had been down in Weymouth (also Dorset) and had curtailed his holiday before it had almost started, as the Foot & Mouth crises began.

It's funny what names you get called. Theoretically all my three names can be jumbled round so that, for instance, I could be David Barrie Gordon, or Gordon Barrie David etc. I often get called Barry when it's Barrie, or Gordon as a first name. There's no convincing people sometimes - even when I've written Barrie Gordon quite clearly, often as type, I get a reply - Gordon Barry! You can't win.

When I was working in London recently I got an email there from a colleague saying "I've heard you're a bit of a Guru" (of some particular system). I wrote back to say I had never been called that before, and I was very flattered. I added, though, that once when I came to work across the concourse at Victoria Station, a woman came up to me and said "You're The Messiah". I said something like "No, not really". (On reflection, if I did say that, it may not have been conclusive enough) and then we sat on a bench outside WHSmith, while the doors to the Tube system remained clenched shut, warning lights flashed there, and worst of all, the sirens of hell squealed that we were all forbidden from entering the underground system. I don't have any recollection of what we spoke about, and when the Tube doors opened, I said goodbye to her. I say 'her', but in fact, I don't really know she was a woman at all, and I wonder how many Messiahs she sees on average at Victoria Station in the rush hour.