Albert Turkey
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanCold wind blowing today.
We went up to Barnet with the intention of fulfilling a few minor objectives and found ourselves thwarted on more than one count.
Having been informed a fortnight ago that we could get Furtle's phone upgraded, we went into Orange where the assistant blithely informed us that it would cost £25, but would be free if we waited until 26th. So that's what we decided to do. I'm not sure how reliable the bloke was. I'm sure that had he been any more bored and world weary he would have expired on the spot. Still, another 3 weeks is nothing.
It appears that Barnet is big enough to have two branches of Barclay's Bank within two hundred yards of each other, but not big enough to warrant a decent CD store. All they have is a severely under stocked WH Smith. We did manage to buy a rolling pin though. Of course we found one a quid cheaper later on in Tesco up by Muswell Hill, for that is where we headed next, despite the energy-sapping easterly wind. Your correspondent being a sturdy Salopian eschewed a sweater under his leather jacket, opting simply for the faithful tee shirt and jeans only. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken my scarf, too. It was rather chilly and more so by the time we got home and dusk was well set in.
Of course all this travelling around in the outer suburbs of north London was taking a toll of my Oyster Card. It should have been fully recharged with an annual travel card, but that didn't quite pan out as advertised. A few months ago my card gave up the ghost and I had to hand it in for a new one. Despite filling out a lengthy form to get the remaining credit and all other details switched at the time, it seems that Transport for London in the guise of Oyster Card not only failed to delete the details of the failed card in favour of the replacement, but somewhere on their database entered those of an entirely fictional third card. Suffice it to say that the failed card is now ready to be loaded up with the travel card and my current card is not. Because of the bizarre vagaries of the system, no-one at the helpdesk can do anything about it. I shall have to wait until 10th January when the system deems that I have had enough time to activate the card and failed before it refunds me.
Had I loaded the card and it had then failed on me, they could have done something. Similarly, had I discovered the error the day I made the purchase, they could have done something then, too. But not now. So I am stuck until 10 January. Of course I only found this out after having waited in a telephone queue for twenty minutes before speaking to some unspeakably rude functionary in a call centre somewhere in, near or around Bumpatabumpar on the Indian Subcontinent. "Of course, since it was your fault that the credit ended up gainst the deleted card..." Bloody cheek. In the morning I shall be sending a rude email to someone, once I have tracked an address down from the website, much of which may as well be labelled terra incognita and here be dragons and amply decorated with whales.
Anyway, we got to Tesco in the end and amongst the other stuff we bought, I found that Sony/BMP have repackaged a heap of albums by various artistes into cheap card double packs in their budget "x2" range. Two CDs for a fiver, then. I took the opportunity to avail myself of From Langley Park to Memphis and Jordan: The Comeback by Prefab Sprout and Grace coupled with Mystery White Boy by Jeff Buckley. A tenner the lot.
Every little helps, as they say.
We went up to Barnet with the intention of fulfilling a few minor objectives and found ourselves thwarted on more than one count.
Having been informed a fortnight ago that we could get Furtle's phone upgraded, we went into Orange where the assistant blithely informed us that it would cost £25, but would be free if we waited until 26th. So that's what we decided to do. I'm not sure how reliable the bloke was. I'm sure that had he been any more bored and world weary he would have expired on the spot. Still, another 3 weeks is nothing.
It appears that Barnet is big enough to have two branches of Barclay's Bank within two hundred yards of each other, but not big enough to warrant a decent CD store. All they have is a severely under stocked WH Smith. We did manage to buy a rolling pin though. Of course we found one a quid cheaper later on in Tesco up by Muswell Hill, for that is where we headed next, despite the energy-sapping easterly wind. Your correspondent being a sturdy Salopian eschewed a sweater under his leather jacket, opting simply for the faithful tee shirt and jeans only. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken my scarf, too. It was rather chilly and more so by the time we got home and dusk was well set in.
Of course all this travelling around in the outer suburbs of north London was taking a toll of my Oyster Card. It should have been fully recharged with an annual travel card, but that didn't quite pan out as advertised. A few months ago my card gave up the ghost and I had to hand it in for a new one. Despite filling out a lengthy form to get the remaining credit and all other details switched at the time, it seems that Transport for London in the guise of Oyster Card not only failed to delete the details of the failed card in favour of the replacement, but somewhere on their database entered those of an entirely fictional third card. Suffice it to say that the failed card is now ready to be loaded up with the travel card and my current card is not. Because of the bizarre vagaries of the system, no-one at the helpdesk can do anything about it. I shall have to wait until 10th January when the system deems that I have had enough time to activate the card and failed before it refunds me.
Had I loaded the card and it had then failed on me, they could have done something. Similarly, had I discovered the error the day I made the purchase, they could have done something then, too. But not now. So I am stuck until 10 January. Of course I only found this out after having waited in a telephone queue for twenty minutes before speaking to some unspeakably rude functionary in a call centre somewhere in, near or around Bumpatabumpar on the Indian Subcontinent. "Of course, since it was your fault that the credit ended up gainst the deleted card..." Bloody cheek. In the morning I shall be sending a rude email to someone, once I have tracked an address down from the website, much of which may as well be labelled terra incognita and here be dragons and amply decorated with whales.
Anyway, we got to Tesco in the end and amongst the other stuff we bought, I found that Sony/BMP have repackaged a heap of albums by various artistes into cheap card double packs in their budget "x2" range. Two CDs for a fiver, then. I took the opportunity to avail myself of From Langley Park to Memphis and Jordan: The Comeback by Prefab Sprout and Grace coupled with Mystery White Boy by Jeff Buckley. A tenner the lot.
Every little helps, as they say.