wrong email

For some reason, my Gmail address (jgclarke@gmail.com) receives a surprising amount of mis-directed emails from people who apparently meant to send to jclarke, or jgclark, or some other variation on my particular address. This isn’t totally surprising, as first names which start with “J”, and Jason in particular, are pretty popular.

In any case, these wrong emails arrive to me with some regularity, enough that I have a label in Gmail to group them. Individually they may seem mundane, but taken as a slice of a stranger’s life they can be quite interesting.

I’ve thought about the privacy implications of publishing some of these emails in a series, and I think the process of removing people’s email address or any personal details (and in fact I’ve changed names where I see fit) essentially renders the emails ‘found items’ and makes it reasonable to publish them. If you disagree, please do so respectfully in the comments.

Now, on to the first few in a series. First up, a woman whose return home is apparently imminent, perhaps from a business trip? And who is Bridget? Their nanny?

To: [hidden]
From: [hidden]
Date: 9/20/2007, 10:07am
Subject: I really miss Goldie and you and home

Oh, coordinate whatever is going on with Goldie with Bridget please.

Here’s another one- apparently the correspondents were debating the provenance of the famous Christmas song?

To: [hidden]
From: [hidden]
Date: 10/09/2007, 12:09am
Subject: Cantique de Noël

“O Holy Night” (“Cantique de Noël”) is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem “Minuit, chrétiens” by Placide Cappeau (1808-1877), an accomplished amateur. It has become a standard modern carol for solo performance with a operatic finish.