I had the weirdest piece of junk mail today. An envelope arrived at work containing what looked like a tear-stained, handwritten letter and a shiny ring. A quick skim through and it turns out it was an advert for a piece of computer kit constructed under the premise that the imaginary author was leaving my system for this new and better contender.

It wasn’t amazingly well targeted as I don’t run the original type of system that was the subject of the unfavourable comparison. I’m also not overly inclined to be charitable to the concept of a ‘Dear John’ letter written because the author has decided to go for a better model. As an advertiser’s conceit, it was memorable but also somewhat creepy. From the mistakes in how it was addressed (right name, entirely the wrong address) I suspect that quite a few of my colleagues have also received the same and I hope that none of them is recovering from the trauma of a recent real-life relationship that has been dashed to the ground.

Therefore, I’m not going to spill the beans on who the sender was. Indeed, it was a little hard to fathom the answer and I chose not to look closely enough to firmly pin it down. Still, that metal ring (some kind of shiny, lightweight golden alloy) will come in handy for some kind of craft project in the future.