As I was watching television the other day the local television station broadcast a message:
"Do you know which group of islands Mallorca belongs to? Call our hotline and win 20 euro! Is it a) Svalbard, b) the Kuril Islands (Курильские острова) or c) the Balearic Islands? Call now at [some number I have forgotten]. 2 euro a minute."
I was surprised at the ignorance of the television station. That kind of thing is of course something anyone can forget, but why did they have to ask every single viewer to call them and give them the answer? They must be really desperate.
Always willing to help, I took out a piece of paper and my fountain pen and started composing a letter.
"Dear Madame, Sir", I wrote. "You will certainly be happy to learn that the question you posed us viewers today finally will get an answer. I have after long research and several verifications...."
To my big surprise, the television station repeated the question the following day. And the following. Certainly, by now they would have received my letter.
I sent them another letter - much shorter this time, where I gave them not only the answer, but also a friendly recommendation to look Mallorca up in an bleeding Atlas.
But the question was repeated for several more days on prime time.
Perhaps, I said to myself, they got so many letters on different topics, that they had not found mine in the pile. But there was a solution to this.
I had the answer engraved on a thick brass plate, which I brought to the television station to hand in personally. But the receptionist did not let me in!
Angrily I shouted the answer across the reception area, so everyone who came in, got to hear it and could forward it to whoever wanted to know it.
In the end I had to give up. No one seemed to be interested.
But late that night, when they had stopped broadcasting, I went back with the brass plate. I snuck in through an open window and smashed the brass plate against the marble floor. I pressed one of its sharp corners against the floor and made inch-deep scratches of letters, about one meter high each, across the entire reception area: "Mallorca is in Svalbard!"
Just so they know.
Since then they stopped broadcasting the question about Mallorca.
Instead they have started asking if anyone knows who vandalised their reception area. I think I know that too, but this time they really have to figure the answer out themselves.