Mother in law: The letter 'H'

This is a blog of two parts. Both subjects start with an H. In fact, the first subject is H itself. 

I’ve been driven to write this blog, to make this important public service announcement on the biggest (and only) platform I’ve got, mainly because of the government.

I’m not a massive fan, to be honest. The parties when I had to say goodbye to a close relative through a window. The continual assaults on lawyers. The actual assaults. The general Trumpian attitude to democracy, public standards and honesty. But what I’m about to say is worse than all of that.

When you phone HMRC they pronounce H wrong in the recorded message.

When you phone HMCTS the same thing happens.

Have you any idea how many times you have to listen to the recorded message before you get to speak to a human? There are lots of reasons I would pay more tax but the most important one is so they would have the funds to re-record the message and/or speed up the answering so that my soul doesn’t have to be quite so tormented when I’m trying to check the progress of an I-aitch-T 400.

That’s right, H is pronounced 'aitch'. I know it makes a 'h' sound when you use it in a word, but not when you say the letter name. It is not haitch, the same way M is pronounced em and not mem.

I know we aren’t supposed to judge people on how they speak now, and that it is a very elitist and old-fashioned thing to do. It was my nan who picked me up on my pronunciation of H when I was a little girl, and she spoke like HM the queen on the phone to strangers and like a normal person to friends and family. Who was she expecting to call exactly? But you know who does judge people on how they speak (apart from me and my nan)? A judge. And my one tip is this. If your opponent in court went to public school, he will know how to say H. Presentation - in our industry and others - still counts for a lot. The number of people I’ve met who work in 'HR' who can’t bloody say it drives me up the wall.

I think the worst of it is that people sometimes think they are making an effort to speak well when they say 'haitch', because we are so fond of dropping our aitches in words that start with that letter. I’ve made myself very irritated and set my own teeth on edge talking about it.

With very little segue, I will now move onto the much more positive subject of hot taps. My new office has one and in contrast to my usual 'slow down, do things mindfully' spiel, I’m all for it. I will tell you more about my new office in due course but for now I just want to talk about the tap. The thing is, I’m now in the 18th year of measuring my time in 6 minute increments and if I and every fee earner spends perhaps 12 minutes a day waiting for the kettle, that is…well… probably hundreds of thousands of additional fees in a large firm over the course of a year. More importantly, office kettles in our part of the country are gross. I don’t think it can be good for you to drink solid lumps of limescale every day, and it certainly isn’t appetising.

Also, in my experience, there are two places that office gossip tends to occur. One is by the kettle and the other is on the tea-maker’s trip around the office delivering the aforementioned tea, such gossip inevitably getting more dramatic, negative and overblown with every cup that is put down on a 'I’d rather be [walking my dog/on the beach/drinking prosecco]' coaster. There is no need for rounds of tea with a hot tap, of course, as you can pop and get one very quickly when you feel like it. Yes, I’m getting more new-fangled by the minute at my new firm. As I say, more to follow.

*Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article

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