{"id":13896,"date":"2021-08-02T11:39:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T10:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13896"},"modified":"2021-08-02T14:52:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T13:52:52","slug":"contacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13896","title":{"rendered":"Contacts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

And not the things you stick in your eye!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was looking for a name\/number in my phone this morning; an organisation I did some business with at the start of the year. But I was hampered by my brain not retrieving how I’d entered the information in the first place. So I had to scroll through all the entries until I found the right one. That’s when it struck me how many entries I have in my contacts (1,552), and how many contacts are probably past their ‘use by’ date. If that doesn’t exist, it probably needs to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time I have changed\/upgraded my phone, my contacts have automatically followed me into the new handset. And as they have followed me, they have ordered themselves into categories, like some self-aware micro-Android organisms. William Gibson would be proud of such a thing, he forecast the capability in 1982<\/a>. So let’s have a peek, let’s see who, or what, is living inside the contacts in my phone (n.b. no personal details will be shared).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are the here and now contacts, unrelated people I am in regular contact with; a few neighbours, fellow dog-walkers in the village and, inevitably, the local Indian and Chinese takeaway restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are the here and now professional contacts, the people I’m working with on this job. Then there are the past professional contacts, and there are very many of those. Some past professional contacts go back more than twenty years (and I had to check my CV to age them correctly)! Some of these professional contacts are based in the UK, others are based in North America, Australia, Europe, and several are in locations across India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are the family contacts and, yet again, there are not too many of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are the trades contacts, my financial advisor, my accountant, a couple of roofers, plumbers, tree surgeons, marine engineers, electricians, marinas (the contact that started off this quest is one of these).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some motorbike contacts. Fellow motorcyclists from the days I lived in Oxfordshire and was an active member of OMG, a couple of current fellow motorcyclists, as well as mechanics and tyre-fitters. Bizarrely the details for Leicester Kawasaki, a dealer\/workshop that no longer exists is still listed as a contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of equestrian contacts from recent times, and a huge amount of equestrian contacts going back more than a decade or two; people I socialised with, people I competed against, people I competed for, trainers I used, people I used to train, venues where I regularly competed, and competition organisers I judged for. There are people I bought horses from, and people to whom I sold horses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few caravan contacts (a nice place to pitch up, a couple of caravan engineers – though one is now retired).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are the contacts from bands that have long broken up, some band-members now scattered far and wide across the globe, others now in new bands, some who have given up pursuing music performatively and are now lawyers, accountants, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s the phone number of the guy I almost bought a canal narrowboat off, and there’s the phone number of the canal narrowboat surveyor who I had lined up to check the boat over. The purchase didn’t happen, wiser and more experienced voices guided me away from that one. There are numbers of narrowboat manufacturers, based in this country and in Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in DogWorldtm<\/sup> there are the vets and, in the village, the groomers, and the pet shop, both of which get a lot of our custom since they opened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some might say having 1,552 contacts, largely historical, is a bit silly and yes, maybe it is. But it requires such a small digital envelope in which to carry them. And who knows, one day I might just need the number of that farrier I used to use when I lived in Somerset 25 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And not the things you stick in your eye! I was looking for a name\/number in my phone this morning; an organisation I did some<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}