Disloyal...

Call Centre: "Hello. As a loyal BT customer, I would like to offer you..."*

Me: "Can I stop you there? I am not a loyal BT customer. I left BT five years ago and took my landline and broadband from Talk Talk because it was half the price. I have been extremely satisfied with Talk Talk and loyalty to BT was not my reason for coming back. I wanted my broadband from o2 and the levels of anti-competitive bureaucracy which still exist in the UK telecoms market mean you have to have a BT line for o2 broadband and you have to have it for 12 months, even though I really want o2 to have my landline too. I could, of course, leave BT early, paying a penalty of around £100, so I am waiting until later this month when the Ofcom ruling which forces you to reduce early termination charges comes into effect and then I will be off again..."

Call Centre: (silence.....)  "Erm... oh..."  (silence, click, tone....)

(This is an adapted highlight of a call from earlier today. It may not be word for word, but these calls are recorded for training purposes, so I suppose I could always ask for the transcript. If I'm loyal enough.)


(*Also, if BT is reading this, possibly for training purposes "As you are a loyal BT customer, I would like to offer you..." would be better...)

Hello Auntie...

I went on an official tour of BBC Television Centre yesterday.



Well, some it.

There are bits you don't get to see. You don't get to see the Blue Peter garden. Presumably in case you vandalise it, or dig up the time capsule or tell everyone about Petra. And you don't get to go inside the news studios, in case you are a lesbian and Nicholas Witchell has to sit on you. (This was the official reason given by the tour guides, Simon and Debbie *)

We start with the very low budget Walk of the Dead Entertainers...



Dame Thora, Arthur Lowe, Ernie Wise, Marti Caine, Jon Pertwee... Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly **

And then on inside, where no-one could accuse them of cashing in on recent remakes...



Actually, the last one is Gordon the Gopher. They keep him in a glass-fronted cage now. Perhaps they could do the same with Andi Peters.

We got to see TC1, which is a really big studio where they were rehearsing for Dance X, and TC8, where they were recording the Catherine Tate Christmas Special. In July. "Whadda f***in' liberty!!"

It's all a bit pedestrian. These days no-one really needs the whole "don't wear blue if you're a weather forecaster" thing explaining to them...



...but they do it anyway. And they let you read the news...



(Lisa Kaplinsky)

...of course they show you where Roy Castle did the tap dancing...



...and you get a good look at the Holby Plastic People (don't look if you are of a nervous disposition...)



Now... dinner time!

* Simon is what happens when you're no longer convincing sitting on a bar stool in the background of the Queen Vic, and Debbie is what happens when you're too old to present CBeebies.

** Well, it can only be a matter of time for one of them, and the Strictly Tragic Accident where the other gets a good kicking and falls forever into Len Goodman's handbag is not far off.

What am I bid...?

A different slant on rip-off mobile phone charges. I was very pleased to see that my old mobile phone sold on eBay. And was somewhat surprised to see what it sold for...



Of course, as it was a bog-standard mobile phone, and not one of those Vertu diamond-encrusted ones which someone tried to nick on the motorway this week, the reason it sold for so much was that someone had been a bid ham-fisted with the keyboard when making a bid and then been, quite frankly, a bit scared that both eBay and I would hold him to it...

Hi i,m a freind of *** he is efin stupid portugse he is very sorry but he f*cked up I am english and just come back from the beech can we sort this out please yours in hope ALAN P.s. my e.mail is ************@hotmail.com

Anyway, I didn't - partly because I'm kind and partly because there was no
chance of me getting that much money out of him. But for a while, it did entertain other bidders...

is there a mistake on this phone over 1000 pound email me please im in stiches

...but only ones who can't punctuate or spell. Does that count as positive feedback?

Grrrr...

Yes, all right, dear...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6625581.stm

Now learn to talk...

Served by Pat at 8.29am...

It wasn't a pilgrimage, but it wasn't really tourism either. Part of it was curiosity, but not morbid curiosity; part of it was compulsion.

We went to Ground Zero.

And actually, the renewal which is going on there is quite uplifting.

The big hole in the ground is no bigger than the big holes at any number of major construction projects...



...and the things which remind you of why it's there are round the corner or along side streets...





So it really wasn't morbid, at any point. And it wasn't really particularly easy to relate what happened here to what we all watched on television six years ago. Not because I'm heartless or unfeeling, lacking in sympathy or empathy; just because, initially at least, it was like visiting a film set. But, as I realised later, only because up until this point in my life, everything in New York was just a film set.

And then we went into the temporary visitor centre and listened to some of the personal testimonies and looked at some of the belongings of the victims discovered in the wreckage. But it still seemed like a story, something unreal.

But it was the receipt which did it...



Until I found it again on the exhibition website, I'd remembered it from the exhibition as a train ticket, one tiny bit of paper, recovered from the rubble with a few other belongings.

And for me, it was seeing 9/11/2001 on the receipt which actually made it all real. Something which happened to real people on a real day. Served by Pat at 8.29am...

The Bird (Flu) Table and The Battle Rhythm...

Aithchooo....

So, as of 1pm this afternoon, we have Bird Flu. Not just any old bird flu, but the kind of bird flu that will kill us all (© Daily Mail, probably).

I've learned, thanks to the consistently brilliant BBC News website, that there are at least 15 types of bird flu. We've got strain H5 and there are 9 types of H5. We've got H5N1.

The BBC News also shows us, helpfully, how H5N1 might mutate further and really actually kill us all... Have a go, it's like some morbid computer game...



Anyway, to try and make sure it goes no further than taking down Bernard Matthews, DEFRA has an Exotic Animal Disease Generic Contingency Plan. I feel better already.

Part of the EADGCP (for short) is the Battle Rhythm... This sounds like it might be some tribal drumming technique to pass the news of feathery-death from one (technologically-limited and telephony-poor) Suffolk village to the next, but it's actually just this timetable (click to zoom)...



This makes provision for early-morning and early-evening "Birdtable" meetings. Now I have no idea what these are - someone well-attended at management training courses will tell me - but I imagine they're a kind of meeting where people can arrive, contribute and leave, and not everyone has to be there at the same time, or at all. (If I'm right, I'll take my MBA now...)

I wonder if they might consider renaming these, given that it might hold up proceedings if they have to clear 2,600 dead turkeys off the birdtable before they can start...

A Creative Solution...

Or alternatively, just tell them to stop the hell drawing on the walls!!!

In saner times, if you scribbled on the walls your parents wouldn't write to the Observer in middle-class torment, they would make you scrub it off and give you a clip round the ear.

And quite right too. It never did us any harm, etc. etc.

Just "one" thing...

The BBC has spent my licence fee (and 9,125 other people's) on these, so I think I have purchased the right of reply. And that of judgement. Here goes...

Surfers	The best one...	9/10
Bikes	The noisiest one...	8/10
Hippos	The funny CGI one...	8/10
Kites	The far too new age one...	6/10
Windows	The flashy, but still dull one...	5/10
Footballers	The too techno one...	4/10
Petals	The not actually a circle one...	3/10
Moon	The News and Queen dying one...	2/10

...actually, just one more thing...



...wasn't Robin Hood good?!

(although not as good as Robin of Sherwood...)

Fearsome creatures...

I'm sure I read something about this in the Guardian, but apparently it's something to do with a very warm summer and then some rain and then some more hot weather. Whatever the reason, I thought it was time to get my own back on the pseudo-Australians and their tales of (possibly deadly) fauna.

So I'm letting you know that my house has been invaded thus.

(Don't click that link if you are of a nervous disposition. Oh, too late...)

I've successfully tamed and cleared three in about the past week, but comfort myself with those old wives' tales about them only coming into clean houses. Although not especially phobic, indeed quite at ease, I still prefer not to comfort myself with the urban myths about them crawling into your open mouth as you sleep...

Where's Steve Irwin when you need him, eh?

Alton Towers for rodents...

Like all the other newspapers, The Guardian published the story about Mike the Hamster escaping from the recycling plant which you can read about here (or here on the BBC.)

However, I wish The Guardian had credited the artist who illustrated it...



...because then I would know who to thank for making me laugh.

Mike at position 4 is particularly amusing. Although perhaps no more so than "hamster ducking under blades" at position 2.

Oh Lord...

BBC NEWS - Entertainment - Dance track wins Eurovision vote



Do we never learn? Altogether now, "Royaume Uni, nul points!"

But hang on, isn't this kind of thing just what passes for high art in most of Central Europe? Maybe we have pulled off a winning masterstroke...?

... or just maybe, something with big ethnic drums sung by a woman wearing (not much) rabbit fur will win, like it normally does these days.

In the news...

Digital Spy: Stone wants to quit singing for nursing...



..and who, precisely, (other than presumably any future patients) will complain??

Maybe they will make her wear shoes as well.

Niece to see you...

I am an uncle and I am very excited about it!

My first niece arrived a bit unexpectely at around 1.20pm on Wednesday 30 November. This was a little inconvenient of her as she was actually due on my birthday, but she obviously didn't want either (a) to share or (b) to wait until the end of February.

She was delivered by section and weighed in at (or just "weighed", as she isn't a boxer) 2lb 2oz. (Google Calculator says that's 0.963883786kg, just in case European law applies to blogs.)

Here she is...



...with Mum and Dad.

I think she looks a bit like Great Grandad Hayes did. Compare...



This would be unsurprising, as she has already demonstrated herself to be an awkward Saggitarius!

Roger (Zoe's Dad) firmly believes in his Scottish roots, thinking he is, in some way, William Wallace reincarnate...



...so it's quite fitting that she should be born on St Andrew's Day. She shares her birthday with:

• St. Gregory of Tours, chronicler/bishop (538)
• Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn (1835)
• Winston Churchill, never, in the field of human conflict, etc (1874)
• Ridley Scott, director, Alien, Blade Runner (1937)
• Billy Idol, nice day for a, white wedding (1955)
• Ben Stiller, actor (1965)
• Des'ree, rhythm and blues singer with stupid name (1970)

...and loads of other people you've never heard of, because they are American, and therefore unimportant.

She's a Rooster, according to the Chinese Calendar (Obliging, pioneering, brave... well, definitley the last one, if not the first!)

Her birthstone is Citrine (which I have never heard of, and sounds like lav cleaner...) although it might be Topaz, depending on which highly reliable, based-in-fact, scientifically accurate website you look at.

News on her birthday suggests she will have to work until she is 69...



(which at least she will get to three months before she was supposed to) and important things happened on her birthday in the past too. Madonna was number one in the singles and album charts, the moon was the last day of a waning crescent, this is what the weather was like, and no-one got voted off I'm a Celebrity.

An auspicious day indeed.

Grandad Taylor already has her driving round in this...



...and at £799, she has 17 years to save up.

I will be meeting Zoe for the first time in a couple of weeks, and won't be thinking of anything else till I do. Not even Christmas!* Until then I'm keeping up-to-date with her autobiography. She's very technologically literate already, as are we all our our family. Even Roger, who I suspect has something to do with it.

*Well, maybe Christmas a bit!

Up the Spinnaker Tower...

Had a lovely evening tonight with echoes of New Zealand - although it made the summer seem such a long time ago!

When I saw my college friends Gill and Andy over in NZ, Gill said that she was coming over to the UK in October with their youngest son, Calum. Well, suddenly it's October already and I met them over in Portsmouth tonight. This is Portsmouth...



...and it's a view of it you couldn't get until Tuesday of this week. When this opened...



Five years late. But quite impressive...



...which isn't bad when you consider that not long ago, it looked like this...



Anyway, enough of that. It officially opened on Tuesday and in true British style, the scenic glass lift broke down and stranded some dignitaries. The Great Glass Elevator still isn't open, but the ordinary one was open, so up we went...

They checked us to make sure we weren't terrorists...



...and then there we were, with panoramic (nearly, I'd estimate about 270°...anorak) views of Portsmouth!







...and bits of Gosport, where Gill and Andy used to live.

The second echo of New Zealand is that it's a bit like the Sky Tower in Auckland, and has a glass floor. Bigger than the one in the Sky Tower and the biggest one in Europe. Here are some people trying it...



(You have to take your shoes off, but are obviously allowed to keep your crime-against-fashion pink poncho on...)

Adults were nervy and unsure, but children, including Calum, were fearless..



...and his Mum (and my foot) also got in on the act...



...and here's how far it was down...



We had about an hour up there altogether and visited all three floors. The top floor is called the Crow's Nest. The other two floors are called Floor 1 and Floor 2, which being as they had five years' delay seem remarkably dull names. (You can get all the stats about how many double decker buses would fit up there and how far the foundations go down to hold it still at the tower's website.)

We even managed to get a shot for the Mirror Project website...



...to go with my other two.

We came down and tried to take some spectacular photos of the tower. Here's my effort...



...and here's Gill trying to get hers, with Calum looking on...



...and I even tried the night mode on the camera with limited degrees of success...



Hope Andy and Beck will see these back in New Zealand. I apologise in advance for the commentary Gill made me do on the video. (She could've picked up tips from the BBC, who were up there too...)



Thanks Gill and Calum for an excellent evening - I'm looking forward to seeing you again at Christmas 2006! x

Near Miss and Narrow Escape...

Some mad bloke tried to crash a stolen light aircraft into the Sky Tower in Auckland yesterday.

A Near Miss beacuse he did, landing in the sea...



And a Narrow Escape because look where I was a month and a bit ago...



Anyway, it turns out he wasn't some Radical Fundamentalist Extremist Kiwi Terrorist, just some bloke who was trying to get his wife back...

Where has New Zealand gone?

I've finished posting to the New Zealand blog now I'm back, but you can still see it here, or by clicking the link on the right. I posted a few things when I got home, so you might need to catch up!