Question arising from tidying up

[ewx]

What on earth is the point of the Thomson Local directory? I don't think I've used it once in my life (even before discovering the Internet) but it's been coming through the door for as long as I can remember (which in this case means at least back to the 1980s).

Have you ever used it?

Comments

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

It was great when moving every couple of years, a handy section in the front telling you about councils and libraries and local maps and emergency chemists and stuff. Haven't used it since I got broadband internet.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I have never used it either.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Does using it as a makeshift cutting and drilling mat count?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Nope. I think opting out of Royal Mail walk-sorted junkmail or something on http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/ has stopped them sending them to me.

[gerald_duck]

Nope, never. I've always thrown them away unopened, as have my parents before me.

Even before the Internet I used Electronic Yellow Pages via a modem in the eighties. But we've been throwing away Thomson Locals for longer still.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

ISTR that when I still lived with my parents it was better than the Yellow Pages for some purposes, though I don't now remember what they were. It may have been an artefact of where we lived and the respective areas covered.

Of course these days it has approx. 0 in it, so is useless.

[simont]

I vaguely recall that at some point in the last couple of years I have used it once to look up a local business, though I forget which one. I don't doubt the Yellow Pages and the Internet would both have had that number too, though; the Thomson was just closest to hand.

[em788.livejournal.com]

There was a year when it provided some information we couldn't find in the yellow pages, since when I haven't been allowed to throw it away. I think that once it had a map of how the local post codes worked although I can't now remember why I was so pleased to find that.