When I get home from work each day and fetch the day’s stack of emails my normal routine is to go through them quickly and delete all the obvious spam and junk.  Then I go through the junk mail folder and extract any ‘real’ mails that have found their way in there. After that I scan through a load of regular mails/newsletters to see if any are worth keeping, and then I look through the ‘proper’ emails.

I look through all of them to see which I just need to read and delete, which I need to read and file, and which need a reply – and how much effort is going to go into the reply.  Whether I reply immediately or not depends on what else is going on.

The other day I noticed one from a Horsham voter asking specific questions about the Digital Economy act.  I decided to put that to one side and answer it properly later on, and moved onto some of the easier ones.  The easier ones are the from letters from campaigns where I have already had exactly the same email from a few other people and so I know exactly how to reply.

This evening I rememberd I still had to answer that Digital Economy act mail and couldn’t find it.  I must have either deleted it by mistake or inadvertently filed it.  I have had a quick look through the most likely folders and suspect I deleted it, so now I am kicking myself.

It is not that one vote matters – and who is to say whther the person would have liked whatever I was going to say anyway – but its the principle.  Somewhere out there in Horsham is somebody who thinks I am just deliberately ignoring them.

On reflection, there could be a lot more.  I find an increasing number of mails from voters in the junk mail folder so there is a fair chance that I might have missed some – but I don’t know about them.  It is the mail that I know I misplaced that is bothering me.

If anybody has emailed me and not got a reply – give it another go and I’ll try to be more careful this time!