Monday, March the 27th, 2006

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The Lure of Junk

Finding one's inbox crammed with junk emails is trying, although it is by no means top of the list of things that rouse my indignation. Pleasurable as it may be to embark upon a rant, I fear that in doing so Hooting Yard would fall victim to the tetchiness and spleen that sours so many websites. Readers do not alight here for that kind of thing, after all. We aim to instruct, edify, and entertain, and for those times when you are keen to read a litany of complaints, there are untold thousands of blogs and suchlike with names like Moaning Minnie and Getting In A Flap About Nothing In Particular. I may even start one myself.

Where was I? Ah yes, junk emails. So often tiresome, but occasionally they can be amusing, as was one I received this morning, for the simple reason that it began “Dear Horse Enthusiast”. After that, admittedly, it swiftly grew tedious. As the “owner of a horse-related website” I was being offered free inclusion in an equestrian directory, aiming to “improve the connection between people who provide horse-related information, services, and products and those who seek them”. This seems to me an admirable service.

I have never before thought of myself as a Horse Enthusiast, but perhaps Christine Wendin, who signed the letter, knows me better than I know myself. Ms Wendin is apparently the COO of the Equestrian Directory, which I take to indicate that she is its Chief Operating Officer, or similar, though she could conceivably be a Clairvoyant Old Ostrogoth, peering into an orb which reveals to her horse enthusiasts like myself who, for one reason or another, have so repressed our enthusiasm that we live empty lives in blithe ignorance of our true calling.

I have given this much thought, and intend to print up a set of visiting cards reading Frank Key, Editor of Hooting Yard & Clairvoyantly Revealed Horse Enthusiast, perhaps emblazoned with a monogram of a horse's head, or mane, or shanks.