Telephone conversation this morning:
Caller: Hello, my name is Mr —–, I want to complain about rubbish collection in Wembley.
Me: I'm afraid you need to call Brent Council about that, this is a private house in the London Borough of Hounslow.
Caller: But I dialled the number for Brent Council.
Me: No you didn't – if you had, Brent Council would have answered the phone. Instead, you called me, possibly because you're stupid. *hangs up*
I know I should be more tolerant with these callers, and back in the days when we used to get 15 calls a day like that I was. Usually.
But now it's something like five years since the phone codes changed and people started to make the mistake of calling us when they actually wanted the Streetcare Department of Brent Council, and I figure if you can't work it out in that time, you don't really deserve to be treated with kid gloves.
If you've Googled this page looking for how to actually contact Streetcare, the trick is to just add 020 to the start of the eight-digit number – if you add 0208 you get us.
And you don't want to do that, okay?