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Telegrams gone

Just wondering, now that telegrams have been phased out, what does the Queen send you now when you turn 100? An SMS? Something along the lines of:

Congrats 2u Re 100 b'day. Rgds E2R Σ:-)

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

9 replies on “Telegrams gone”

Actually telegrams are still used. It’s just that they arrive in your mail box in a normal envelope (but yellow). If you dont pay your gas/water/electricity bills for a while they actually send you a telegram reminding you to pay up.

That’s very clever. I reckon the Queen would use that crowned smiley face for all her SMS’s. Can you picture her with a phone in her hand, busily texting her grandsons?? :) Hilarious!

Stuart, I didn’t know that, but it sounds like they’ve just hooked into the postal network. Even as late as the 1970s, telegrams would be delivered super-fast and could be used to reach people who didn’t have telephones. In fact in the late 70s when my parents split up, my dad didn’t have a phone. My mum would send a telegram if she needed him to come over for something urgently! I’ll have to ask her how long it took to deliver, but it was certainly same-day.

Had to hunt around a bit to find a character that looked like a crown. In the end I got the Greek letter Sigma… I’m not even sure if you can do this on a mobile phone!

Using the euro symbol for the Queen of England? That wouldn’t be very PC. My phone’s got one that looks like a circle with four dots on each corner – ¤ – (no idea what it is and I’m not sure if the symbol I inserted will come through) that would sort of work. Maybe not as well as the sigma, but I don’t have that one on my phone.

– OLS

Got me all worried for a minute that I might not have sigma on my phone. I checked and I have sigma, theta, lamda, xi, pi, phi, psi and omega. Whew, what a relief. I’m a bit disappointed I don’t have ‘Å¡’ though, it would make spelling my ex-girlfriend’s nickname a lot easier. At least if I have to send someone calculus or ever marry a princess I’ll be right.

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