Fireworks done - Now post the flyers!

Last week at home we had the unfortunate matter of our landline home telephone deciding to no longer work.

It just stopped. Holiday mode I imagine.

As if by magic it just suddenly went silent during Tuesday morning, and to be honest it was fairly adamant it wasn’t coming back any time soon.

One Stop Shop

My curious mind couldn’t help thinking the other end of the phone line had been unplugged in the exchange box.  Hmmm…

With it went the broadband connection. Fortunately British Telecom (BT) are responsible for it all so I promptly logged a fault with them.

How Long?

Now, as I’m on their superfast, high performance Infinity 2 broadband deal I’d hoped for a swift investigation.  Unfortunately I was mistaken.

“Sometime over the next 4 days we’ll have a look for you”, was the response.  Four days? This is 2012 for heaven’s sake!

That Was Quick

Well, eventually an engineer turned up on Thursday. Oddly enough after a swift visit to the local exchange box he had it resolved in a jiffy!

Loose plug perhaps?

It’s quite frustrating, paying for an expensive service for two days of nothing. Wonder what they do with my money if it’s not to fund my fibre connection 24 hours a day?

Anyway, fortunately it’s fixed now so thank you BT.

Oooh, A Bit of Post!

So, this leads me onto something that popped through my letterbox yesterday. You know the old fashioned way of communicating.

The envelope in question was addressed to “The Householder”. It was from BT.

Ex-Directory Does More Than I Thought

Odd, I’m sure the last time I spoke to them they knew my name. And what’s up with not emailing me to save time and money?  You know, my money that I pay every month!

May be they didn’t know they’d fixed my connection issue so decided to write to me instead.

I’m assuming of course that it was a general flyer that every household received. Fair enough, although seems a bit pointless in one way.

Funny Olympics

So what was inside?  Well it contained a rather large poster, about A2 in size, of a colourful and funny cartoon picture. Great, I love cartoons!

The cartoon related to the London 2012 Olympics and had plenty of comical and light hearted shenanigans going on all over it. Clearly a lot of effort had been applied to producing it.

Let’s Party!

Now given that the London 2012 Olympics finished over a week ago, 10 days to be precise, I assumed it was celebrating Team GB’s success in winning so many medals at home.

Er… no.

The main heading across the middle read “This Summer’s Biggest Deal”.  Below it was an offer for broadband and calls “from the official broadband provider of London 2012”.

The next heading said “A Performance you can rely on”.  Words such as reliable and superfast were mentioned in the statements that followed.

But You Know I Have That?

Apparently I can keep right up to date with all the results from the Olympics, with BT. It even comments on my existing service failing right at the final moments of the 100m sprint, and that I need to get a new service from them to guarantee unspoilt entertainment.

What… how… but… I’m on the most expensive, the fastest and best service that BT have available.

Perhaps Just Bad Timing…

Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the bold sales strategy being applied here but come on, really?

I’d hardly call my BT connection reliable considering what happened last week. Yes, it’s superfast but this offer hardly shows great performance by arriving so late.

Conclusion

I’m sorry to say that we only have the London 2012 Paralympics remaining.  The main London 2012 Olympics fortnight has long since departed so I can’t keep up to date with the 100m Final or any other event that I may pass interest over.

Oh hang on, of course I did. Silly me.

As I’ve mentioned, I already have their high performing superfast BT Infinity 2 service rendering this flyer as completely pointless.

Then there’s the confident wording relating to reliability and performance.  Oh please BT, be careful with your timing.

Finally

Now, had this turned up a week ago followed by the writing of this article then I’d be wondering if I’d been responsible for my own loss of service last week… but then I’m not sure they know who I am, where I live or even what day it is.

Thanks anyway BT, I enjoyed the cartoon!

I can't slam dunk it... it won't fit!

Have you ever heard someone utter the words, “a licence to print money”?

Hmm, yes probably.

It’s a nice thought and a great privilege if you’re allowed to do it.

Well, the Royal Mint has that very privilege. They also have the honour of making coins by the billions to pump into the monetary system.

Perfection is the key

Clearly it carries a great responsibility. Everything has to be exactly right with the printing of each note and the structure of each coin. With a high level of accuracy every single item produced has to be as per the design specification.

Ok, so that’s marvellous.

When Was That Then?

Well apart from when they get the design wrong that is. Take for example the new 20p coin launched in 2009. Its size and weight were perfect but after the Royal Mint had sent 200,000 into circulation they then realised they had forgotten to date them. Coin collectors went mad of course, paying up to 250 times their face value to get hold of one.

I’m sure that’s a mistake that the Royal Mint will never make again.  Presumably they now have even stricter rules to reach perfection.

Great, that’s marvellous.

Change Saves Money

Well, unfortunately it appears that isn’t the case. You see, the Royal Mint have just launched new 5p and 10p coins. The new designs will save them £8m a year apparently.

Now that is marvellous.

The cost saving is in the material used for the coins as they are now being made out of steel instead of copper and nickel. So what’s the problem then?

A Cost Saving? Er, No

Well unfortunately it would seem that in order to keep the coins the same weight they’ve made each one thicker.

You see, in the UK there is an old style parking meter that is unable to accept the thicker coins, and the problem is they are installed everywhere. The estimate to replace these useless parking meters is estimated to be around £80m, to be paid for by the local councils.

Not marvellous at all.

Lack of Parking

So due to the incompetence of the Royal Mint coin designers there are bound to be some serious parking issues coming up. The thing is, parking is bad enough already. Car parks never seem to be made big enough.

May be this will force the government and councils to look into controlling parking in a better way.

Why Put It There?

For instance, my youngest daughter plays netball during the evening at a local sports leisure centre. Parking would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a secondary school bolted onto the side of it.

This means that whenever the school hold a parents evening, or something similar, it’s impossible to find a space to park. It leads to double parking and complete chaos.

Get Famous & I’ll Press Record

Of course I do find somewhere to park eventually, but I end up missing a substantial amount of her training session. She really enjoys playing and her ability is improving all the time I might add, not that I get to see much of it.

Who knows maybe one day she’ll be on TV. At least it will allow me to watch a recording once I’ve given up on the parking idea.

Success can surely happen as only last year one of the older girls progressed to playing for England, which is fantastic. If only netball had been made into an Olympic sport then she could’ve potentially played for England at the London 2012 Olympics, and been on TV too.

Now that would definitely be marvellous.

London 2012 Olympics Special

Oh, whilst on the subject of the London 2012 Olympics, a special commemorative collection of coins are now on sale. Guess who made them?

Yes, the Royal Mint of course.

A lot of thought has gone into the making of them, and let’s face it, given the amount of attention surrounding the London 2012 Olympics they need to get them bang on perfect.

The Collection

There are 29 coins to collect in all. Each one representing a different Olympic sport from the London 2012 line up.  Number 5 for instance is basketball.

Personally I really enjoy basketball. I loved playing it and find it great to watch, which is why I’m off to see a couple of games with my family when the Olympics arrive in London.  It’s because of this that my dad has bought me a number 5 coin to keep.

Basketball Queen

Now, we had a look at it to see the unique design on it, and yes, it represents the sport of basketball. There’s a special moulded design on one side. On the other side, the head’s side, it has the standard Queen’s head with the official wording of “ELIZABETH.II.D.G REG.F.D.2011”.

Yes, they remembered the date this time.

So well done Royal Mint, that’s marvellous.

Conclusion

Well no, it isn’t really. The thing is, presumably the date on a coin has to be when it was actually made. Otherwise it may be deemed illegal. I get that bit.

So I guess you may have realised by now that for something that is to be a collectable, commemorative coin for the London 2012 Olympics does in fact have the date of ‘2011’ planted on it.

Only the Royal Mint could make something so collectable, seem so worthless.

Marvellous… absolutely marvellous.

No problem, I'll do it tonight...

Quite often I feel as though I never have any free time.

Well, when I say free time, I guess I really mean spare time. That’s spare time to do something else.

You see, I have a list of tasks that I need to do, or possibly want to do.

In fact, I have many lists. I even have a list of lists.

Fortunately I haven’t yet reached the point of needing lists of my lists of lists.

Family Time

For some reason I seem to struggle to organise my time at home. I try to make time to work through all the tasks I have to do, but I fail on so many levels.

I think one reason is simply because I always put my family first, and I’m fine with that. I definitely never want it to be any other way. I like to think I’m the type of husband and dad who’ll be there, no matter what.

Don’t Worry, I Have All Night

Now, obviously this can be a major distraction from my ever growing list of things to do. And of course it is. And that’s fine too, in a round about sort of way.

I say this because I consistently tell myself that I’ll get on with my bits once everyone else has been sorted out. So basically that’s once they’ve all either settled down for the evening in front of the TV, or retired to bed for a good night’s sleep.

That’s when my “spare time” begins.

But Be Quiet

Unfortunately, whilst this sounds fine it does have some consequences.

For instance, I can’t do anything that will result in making a loud noise. Like decorating for example, or putting up a few shelves, or even printing some of my artwork for that matter. It just wouldn’t work. Well it would, but I clearly wouldn’t be thanked for it.

Plus, this so called spare time is at the worst time of the day. Once night falls and I work out what I’m going to do, I’m just too exhausted to concentrate on doing any of it.

Writing

Now, writing is another task on my list, and pretty high up on it too.

Take my blog for instance. I can easily think of a topic to write about next but it’s finding the right moment to sit down and actually write it up, or jot it down… whichever is correct.

It just becomes a bit of a struggle for me.

Everything Is A Task

So therefore the end result is that my list gets longer. My next blog post doesn’t happen. The house looks the same as it did last year… and the year before that.

So until I get my own time in order and do what I should, or could, be doing I won’t be crossing off any task from any of my lists for a little while yet.

You see, that’s a task in itself… to look at how I can manage my lists better. Oh dear, I’d better add that to the list now too.

Conclusion

So in the meantime, please talk amongst yourselves and wait for my next blog post.

Oh hang on, I’ve just written it.

Well how on Earth did I manage that?