Tuesday 20 September 2005

mixed signals


On Sunday, I made a quick trip into town to pick up a few essentials. As I made my way home around the ring road (a one-way road that circles the main part of Huntingdon), the radio station I was listening to suddenly went crackly. A woman's voice faded in, and as I was only half paying attention, I just caught the last half of what she was saying. It sounded very much like an ad for a racy phone line, but this was Sunday afternoon on Radio One - I must have misheard. I thought it might have been part of the song, and I continued on my merry way without another thought.

Yesterday, as I made my way around the ring road to go to the gym, Radio One faded out again. The same ad played on my radio, and this time I was certain about what I heard. I'd been radio spammed! Someone must be using the traffic announcement feature that most people have enabled on their car stereos. This feature allows local radio stations to "break in" to whatever station you're listening to in order to broadcast local traffic reports every so often. Since I have TAs enabled, I think this is how these rogue saucy ads are making their way to my car speakers. This is more than just a little bit annoying. It's bad enough that we have commercial television, flyers through our letterboxes, spam emails, double glazing salesmen on our telephones, and dubious text messages on our mobiles prompting us to call strange phone numbers to claim our free trip to Florida. Now I've got some chick inviting me to call her, free of charge, and tell her my fantasies.

I'm very tempted to call and say, "Yes, hello. My fantasy is to wake up every morning to a sparkling clean house, a full English breakfast that contains no fat or calories, I'd like to have the same figure as Angelina Jolie, and a large bundle of cash deposited into my account on an hourly basis. Thanks. Bye."

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