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We have been watching lots of old, b&w English films recently. Last night it was 'Green for Danger' with a youngish Trevor Howard. Spoiler: It was one of the nurses.

People altruistically put things up on You Tube and then they get hi-jacked with adverts. At least eight times during last night's film, an ad popped up which had to be physically removed with the cursor. The worst thing about it is that the ads are for a product or service which cannot be accessed outside of the USA and has no relevance to most people's lives in any case. Even if it did, would you be more likely to respond positively if each advert did nothing but make you increasingly angry? This is not 'smart advertising' - it's not even targeted advertising. Some companies - most companies - are wasting their money.

During the last few weeks, flyers have been put through our door advertising care homes for the elderly. I don't know if this is targeted or not, but it probably has something to do with the crisis in care homes. Apparently, many care home workers are refusing vaccination. This is not a government problem with the roll-out as people first thought, it is to do with a culture of conspiracy which seems to have taken hold amongst care workers. Nobody can - as yet - force them to have the jab, and as there is a shortage of workers in this sector, they are not concerned about the threat of dismissal. 

These advertising flyers have been delivered every day for about three days - the same flyers and more than one with each delivery. Whoever got the job of delivering them has made their lives a little easier by posting multiples through the same door for three days running. They might as well have thrown them away in the morning and gone back to the office with an empty sack.

We have had a flurry of leaflets listing 'trusted tradesmen in your area' too. The printers (you can hardly call it publishing) have got tradespeople to pay them for the advert, promising that the leaflets will be posted through 50,000 doors in the area, then post them through 12,500 letterboxes, four times. More money thrown away.

Halfway through watching the film and halfway through deleting half of the advert pop-ups, the landline rang. We paused it and I picked up the phone.

"Hi. This is Ed returning your call about the government sponsored home insulation scheme?" I put a question mark there because his voice rose at the end, signifying that a response was required from me.

What he was probably expecting was an elderly man's voice saying, 'Err, no I don't recall that, but since you're here carry on and tell me all about it'. Instead what he got was, "NO YOU'RE NOT YOU LYING BASTARD!" 

A friend of mine had become so fed up with a series of automated fake calls with a female American accent, that when the phone rang for the fourth time he shouted FUCK OFF! and slammed it down.

A minute later it rang again and a charming woman with an American accent told him that she was the Features Editor for Interiors magazine, and she wanted to do an article about him with photos. She did not mention the previous call, probably because she was used to it. Oops.