Tuesday in London

Yesterday (Tuesday 20^th April) was an interesting day.

Firstly, I ordered a Blackberry Curve 8520 over the weekend, and it turned up shortly before leaving for London. To illustrate this, my current mobile (the Nokia 5000 that David bought me almost a year ago) keeps turning itself off when on screensaver mode. I pay £10 a month for a SIM-only package with o2, which is 150 any network minutes and 300 text messages. I do, however, use a lot of mobile internet data. On the days when I don’t want to take my laptop with me, I use my mobile phone to check my email (and sometimes other sites i.e. National Rail) via WAP. This uses about £5 worth of data a month, so you can see why change was needed. Well, o2’s Blackberry plans (just like those for the iPhone) are rather expensive, so I had a look at T-Mobile.

I had the offer of getting the 8520 for £27 and paying the same as what I am currently paying i.e. £15 a month, for 100 minutes and 100 text messages, plus a flexible booster to add something of value i.e. unlimited text messages, plus all the data the Blackberry can eat. So, I can get all this for the same as what I’m currently paying, plus being able to fix the cost. In the end, I decided to splash out another £5 a month i.e. £20 in total, to increase from 100 to 300 any network minutes, and this got me the brand new 8520 for free. That’ll do. I like the keyboard layout having letters and numbers in QWERTY format, as opposed to pressing each key up to seven times! Feel bad about leaving o2, but, they’ve had quite a few years of money out of me! The Nokia 5000 will be kept as a spare phone, alongside the other handsets that I am now collecting.

 

So, aside from that, I went into London, to do my first “solo” shift for Switchboard. Before hand, had arranged to meet Malc in central London for lunch. Before doing so, I stopped at Kings Cross Post Office, to send an envelope up to my mother & sister in Dundee. As I was queuing, I could see some small photo printer boxes. I’ve been looking for one of those for a while, and could not see them elsewhere! This one is an AGFA AP-1100, and I went over to that part of the shop, and asked to see it. The person behind the till took one down, blew the dust off it, apologised, then got a cloth and cleaned the rest of the dust off! It’s a little thing that prints 6x4 pictures. For the times when I need one, I normally get prints made online. Well, the supplies (paper and ribbon) for this thermal printer work out around 30p each, which is the same as I’m usually paying for small numbers of prints, plus, no waiting! If you are thinking “more extravagance”, well, it was only £19.99. Result.

 

We went for lunch, then towards the top end of Tottenham Court Road. While I was waiting, I spotted an unofficial campaign to get Londoners off the buses, and walking. You can read more about this here. I’ve taken a few pictures of the slogans, and you can see those here.

After all that, to work! It was a good afternoon, once it got going, and I went home into the evening peak, very happy with all that I’d done.

 

Today and tomorrow (Wednesday 21^st and Thursday 22^nd April) is a day working from home, and deliveries.