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...)

A Mrs Thatcher moment...

I suppose that I have this in common with a lot of people... I try not to fill my thoughts with Margaret Thatcher. But, earlier today, I thought about something she said 23 years ago.

I'm currently in mainland Europe, where it has snowed a lot...



(This is Mozart, in Salzburg, coping well with the "big freeze". Coping less well with the fact that he appears to be composing with a pencil, something which wasn't invented until 20 years after he died....)

...and here, they deal with the snow really well. It's 6-8 inches deep and the roads and the railways are all fine. Ahem, even the schools were open...

The fast, fairly luxurious, double-decker train from Munich got to Salzburg bang on time...



(...and that's in a different country. Through some Alps. Albeit small ones...)

And, of course, they get it all the time, so they are used to it. But there must be other underlying reasons why we're so rubbish at snow in the UK...

I wondered how, here, the trains were clean and reliable, how there were still conductors and ticket inspectors (plural) on the stations and on the trains, how the snow didn't bring it all to a grinding halt...



(Here at Ostbahnhof in Munich, this man spent the best part of 30 minutes clearing the snow from a platform and looked like he was enjoying it... He had a very substantial looking machine to help, but the two people doing it on our platform just had shovels, so no major investment needed...)

I'd decided that it was probably something to do with it not needing to make a profit; being a nationalised concern for the good of the people! Damn you, Mrs Thatcher, and your privatisation of all the train companies and the break up of the system!!

But it turns out that Deutsche Bahn is a private comany after all, so does need to make a profit. So that can't be it...

Anyway, I aksed Jon, who now lives here in Munich, why he thinks the public transport system is so good, how it manages to employ so many people, make a profit and not let a bit of (the wrong type - any type - of) snow bring it skidding to a halt. He gave a most complete and accurate answer in just three words...

"People use it..." he said.

And of course that makes sense.

When, in 1986, Mrs Thatcher said "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure," she helped to make sure that, if you have to use public transport in the UK, that's in some way shameful - you're just cattle; too crap to have your own car. She also engineered the system which means that it costs £8 to get to Southampton and back from my house, whereas here, you can travel between Munich and Salzburg (and back) - 180 miles, between countries! - for £5.

Bless her.

(On the down side, the snow here is just something you have to get rid of to make the trains run. It's commonplace, so no-one plays with it - no snowmen, no snowball fights. I don't think that's Thatcher's fault. Probably just miserable Europeans...)

Seriously...

How thick would you have to be...?

Currency...

After a summer spent computing exchange rates in my head and getting to grips with foreign notes and coins......



(Hong Kong notes: some these appear to have been printed by my bank, which I wouldn't trust to produce anything secure or technical...)



(Australian notes: all of which have a see-thru bit and have gone "polymer" meaning they can be recycled into bins and other stuff at the end of their life...)(not my fingers, by the way...)



(Australian coins: which have kangaroos and koalas and echidnas on the one side, but are reassuringly royal on the other...)



(She looks really grumpy, doesn't she...?)

It seems bizarre to come home and find the money is just as foreign...



2ps and pennies seem to be very prevalent already, but haven't seen the rest yet...



...only in the picture.

If you get asked what's on the front on a ten pence piece, you might hesitate then say "Britannia" or "portcullis" or "lion" or something else really random because we're a bit ignorant about something so common which we handle everyday, yet hardly look at.

Of course, what's really on the front of the ten pence piece is the Queen's head, because that's what's on the front of all the coins (something else most of us forget - the front is really the back and the back is really the front...)

That hasn't changed with the new designs, but the answer to what's on the back of the coins will now always be "a bit of shield...", which might make pub quizzes easier, but surely lacks a bit of variety...

Always there... *

Now we might not be in the Premiership any more and we haven't got the Spinnaker Tower. Vosper Thorneycroft has gone, leaving Portsmouth doing ships better than us too. The Titanic and Craig David both sunk. But Southampton still Shows good Boat.

Although you have to approach it all very subversively and with a good dollop of cynicism it's still a good day out.

Small bits of town - old car parks, bits of dockside, Mayflower Park - seem to be able to host a huge show, including 240 tons of borrowed Weymouth Sand, and you only realise exactly where you are when you get high enough up to see...



You can buy virtually anything nautical including...

...boats:



(Look carefully... the price you pay is in the small font. The big price is the Boat Show discount...)

...really big boats with plasma tv screens, several floors and staff:



(This one is soooo expensive and posh that they make you put bags over your shoes just to be allowed on the carpet...)



...astroturf flipflops:



...and a Teletubbies hat:



(This is Tracy incorrectly modelling some manner of onboard storage receptacle. Available from Solent Plastics...)

There were many pirates. These were better than some and did the voices and everything.



(Although they didn't know they had missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day on 19 September. Shiver me timbers, etc...)

And one more shot of the quite spectacular £2.9 million Sunseeker Predator 82. We're there somewhere if you zoom in. And we're flickred too.



*Avril: “If I go ahead with the Barracuda, Charles, you’ll refuse to support me..?”
Charles: “If you go ahead, Avril, I’ll fire you...."
Ken: "You'll get Relton Marine over my dead body..."
Jack: "I'm building Barracuda and bringing the Mermaid Yard into to 20th century..."
Jan: "I have new stock of the orange jump suit with the shoulder pads...."
Leo:"Clip clop clip clop clip clop..."
Clod: "Qu'est-ce que c'est dans la distance??? Oh Merde!!!!!"
Simon May Orchestra: "Daaaaa-da dahh, daa-daa-daaa, daaaaa-da-dahh..."

Talk Talk to me while you can...

Have finally dumped BT after paying them £11.99 a month + Caller Display + Call Diversion + Calls (= a lot) for actually not making any calls and then paying Virgin another £17.99 a month for broadband on top of that.

It is something I will undoubtedly regret. Although TalkTalk has a very trendy personalised Welcome Pack...



...and everything is written in very calm and reassuring Plain English, it has an unenviable Customer Service record: "Press 1; your call is important to us; we expect to answer your call at 3.37am" etc.

My switch date is 8 September. Say goodbye now. It's unlikely that you will see or hear from me again after then...

You bet!

A successfully family afternoon! We won £72.50 altogether. I won. Roger won. Susan won. Zoe won (and she's not strictly speaking old enough to bet yet...)

My Dad was the Weakest Link, leaving with nothing...

Hole in the wall...

Have discovered a new (and not particularly convenient) feature on my Chip and PIN card which has not been very well publicised by my bank...



HSBC Call-centre wage-slave: "Don't worry, they will just swipe it and you can sign..."

House! (or not...)

As you can see, I didn't come home tonight any richer. However, I did come home feeling considerably relieved that I don't spend every night feeding a pile of pound coins into a light-up table, chain smoking and eating chips, getting ink from my dobber pen on my shell suit and generally being too obese to walk up steps.

Yes, Portswood Mecca Bingo, that's you, that is.

But it's good fun once in every eight months or so.

NB. They don't do it like you remember from the seaside, ie."Two little ducks," long pause, "Twenty-two", longer pause, "On its own...number 3" etc. It's quick-fire stuff with pens moving over cards so fast it's a blur... Concentrate now...