please empty your brain below

I always get really confused when someone gives me a London number without the code, as they always start it 7******** or 8********, which seems wrong, somehow. And I can't remember numbers starting with anything other than a '0'.

When I was a nipper living in Hammersmith, our phone number was "2989". Now you need a degree to remember it.

I never understood how people could believe that just sticking a '1' after the zero at the beginning of the std code was ever going to solve the problem of the growing need for new numbers.

At some point 02... numbers were always going to be necessary. If the telecoms industry had made that clear from the beginning then three wouldn't have been so much grumbling about it.

Wow Scaryduck, when I was a nipper living in Dorking our phone number was 2949. Was Dorking really only 40 houses away from Hammersmith? Or was it more complicated even in those distant days.

I worked on BT's 'Big Change' website a few years ago, and to me there's no confusion - The dialling code for London is 020. Phone numbers should be notated and read in the form 020-nnnn-nnnn, not 020n-nnn-nnnn.

It seems to me that Londoners are desperate to hang onto their 7's and 8's, which are a relatively recent introduction anyway (it's like people saying they want to keep the Queen's head on our currency, even though it wasn't on their until the turn of the century(?)).

*whispers to Steve*
I think the Queen's head only appeared on our currency around 1952 or 3 (depending how fast they got the new dies cut). Didn't it? (cue DG link)

What I find amusing is all the people who live just outside London and work in the city, that persist in dialling 020 before every number, when they don't have to. They must waste, literally minutes each year!

God - i live in london but i still dial 020 before every number. I think its coz i use my mobile aswell as wasting works phone bill anyhow is is time badly spent.

In the early 1960s my parental phone number was KIPling xxxx. My mother still has the same last four digits but now with 020-8857 in front.

I liked KIPling but would have preferred RODney, particularly as that was the nickname of one of my teachers.

Swap Shop wouldn't have been the same with an 020 number splashed under Noel's desk. Big up 01!











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