Like many people in London, I’m signed up to various “daily deals” provider emails.  Generally they’re a thinly-veiled way to squeeze money out of people by offering discounts on implausibly priced products, however every now & again something drifts by that’s reasonable or fits within a plan that was already happening anyway.
The deal to the right came in today for a SPECIALLY PRICED AFTERNOON TEA & TOUR OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE!
Almost intriguing as a nice surprise for someone, but a quick skim of the “fine print” sort of gives it away…

Admission …

I don’t usually like to get involved with issues of the day, but given the messages and whatnot I’ve had in the last 24 hours I thought I’d break that rule and put together a synopsis of how I’m feeling about what’s going on in London at the moment.
For starters, so far I’m ok.  The place I’m living at the moment is about a mile from the Debenhams store that got smashed up last night (approx 20 mins’ walk).  Last night my eyes were glued to Twitter, trying to see …

When you feel a cold coming on you hit it with vitamins, right? Everyone knows that!
Feeling the unwelcome presence of a cold announcing itself, I went out to [a British chemist chain] and procured the cold-busting trifecta of Berocca, Echinacea and Ginseng.  Berocca because it’s packed with vitamins including C, and that’s widely established to be The Thing For Colds – everyone I’ve spoken to since I was about 10 years old would more than likely tell you that.  Echinacea, because it’s meant to be good for your immune system, …

Just a quick bit of morning incredulousness today – whilst half-listening to the radio (Five Live, for reasons to be explained separately) an ad came on featuring a made-up scene where one man is describing to his friend the benefits of owning the new Volkswagen Transporter.  One of the supposed benefits of the new model, the man explains, is that it has a lower maintenance cost than the previous model and, by implication, other vehicles in its class.
Leaving aside for now the question of why anyone would be influenced in …

Instead of looking around at the immediate outdoor environment and seeing such magnificent t-shirt conducive stuff as this:
you instead peep out of your front door to be greeted with something more akin to this:
For extra added bonus points, there’s also the option of checking the forecast on the BBC website.  Chances are, if you’re not in Australia any more then it might look something like this:

The other fun thing about snow is that it’s one of those ninja weather conditions.  Whereas with rain, you know that it’s going on out …

Barely had a spare second to scratch myself – let alone write blog entries – this week.  Tomorrow morning’s departure to Adelaide is presently very much on my mind, and my primary interest is not sleeping through my 05:00 alarm in order to be able to take off from Heathrow at 09:20 (yeah… 4+ hour lead time – don’t those wacky airlines just make it more fun than you can possibly stand?!).
So there’s no chance of hearing in detail about our Friday night festive awesomeness at The Gunmakers (including Jeffrey …

Supposing you were to be speaking on the phone to your bank, and they said “Would you like to upgrade your account from type X to type Y?”.  You establish that there’s nothing to be done other than that they make a change on one of their screens and your monthly fee goes up slightly in exchange for a raft of services.
Several days later, you log on to your internet bank and go to make a bill payment.  Your bank has recently sent out a security keypad thing, where you …

The great air-movement debacle continues (as expected), but following some A-class verbal punishment by Cath, the building folk agreed to provide us with a proper portable air conditioner (rather than the indoor sprinkler they’d previously furnished us with).  They couldn’t promise when it would arrive – perhaps the next day, or the day after that (I’m thinking “within the next 6 months, tops”), but wonder of wonders – it turned up this morning!
It’s one of those ones which you connect a ducting hose to in order to expel the hot …

Just got a call from Housemate James with some routine stuff, including following up on his question yesterday of why there hadn’t been any post for him.  Apparently he’s ordered about 18 things, and was expecting them over the weekend.  The worst-case scenario is of course to get one of the red “while you were out” cards, which then means you’ve got to wait 48 hours, then go to the fairly awkwardly located parcel depot to collect.  James has had an ongoing suspicion that the postman has been just filling …

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
After several days of failed attempts to psyche myself up to ask Mystery Sandwich Girl out for a drink, I decided that today was going to be the day, dammit.  A real “GO BACK IN THERE, ARTHUR PEWTEY” moment.  All week something’s been not quite right, like there was a big queue of people standing behind me, or the other sandwich shop lady was standing there next to her.  Today it was not going to happen.  I had a plan.  Not quite on par with The Italian Job, but still …