Madam, - The poet Shakespeare reminds us in one of his happier similes that our minutes hasten to their end like as the waves to the pebbled shore. Continuing in this maritime vein, time and tide, as King Canute observed, wait for no man.
Yet every day Eircom's messaging service has the following time-wasting statement for me: "You have [as it might be\] three new messages. The following three messages have not been heard. First unheard message. . ." All this is announced in a robotic monotone suggestive of morning prayer in an orphanage.
The word "new" surely implies unheard. The first of three unheard messages is, one would have thought, unheard. Surely even the least keen-minded subscriber can grasp a piece of information like this if told it only once. It's a bit like that sign I saw in Lettermore that read: "Galf" - presumably for native speakers unfamiliar with the puzzling englishness of "Golf". - Yours, etc.,
TOM MATHEWS, Charleville Road, Dublin 6.