I use an android phone. On it is Google calendar. I use it to note important days, like payday, holidays, birthdays and the like. Nothin' odd about it. But over the course of the past year I've been irregularly receiving emails on gmail clearly not intended for me, a person with a not uncommon but not particularly common given and surname pairing. Such things like a two week holiday booking in Egypt, with flight times and hotel stays. Or concert tickets, a house purchase contract from a bank, even a person's bank account information. Someone has my name, or I have his! I've replied sincerely to every one of them stating that they've got the wrong man.

Yesterday morning I'm sitting around pressing down hard on my daily ablutions and open up the calendar for a quick sticky beak at what's coming up. In the middle of April I note a post saying 'Bill Bailey at the Barbican York'. I know I didn't put it there, so I deleted it. I've never seen anything other than Australian & US holidays and my own personal schedule appear there.

A couple of hours later I receive an email on my gmail account saying 'Not going to the show? Hil xx' No, it was not accompanied by an intimate picture.

A reckon a coupla errant emails is no worries, but twenty or more in a year, and most of them quite personal... I'm not a Ewan Campbell, David Smith, VJ Patel or Weng Xian, or other more common names in this bloody great big world, fer chrissakes!

I think of a reply for a second, but not quickly enough. I'm not a person who would victimise others for a laugh, and in earnest I reply, 'Sorry darl, wrong Darren T.......'

The moment I press send I laugh and think wouldn't it have been a gag if I'd replied in a slightly more facetious tone, like, 'Nuh, going out with your sister instead', or 'You've put on a bit of weight' or something slightly more sinister like 'I'm moving to Turkey, spare any cash?'

I hope the poor girl's not in tears.

All silent on the gmail front.

"Can't make it, luv. Blisters are rupturing and it's agony." 

I have been getting AT&T accounts for a bloke who has given my email address to them for nearly 10 yrs now.I cannot complain by email as I have to put in a zip code, and Australian ones don't work. I got someone in online chat once and she said they couldn't contact the account holder on my behalf, I would have to do it.