Jimmy Hall

Before reading this please note that my lovely new iPhone has arrived and works wonderfully.  Thank you Orange.  However, the road to happiness is a sometimes a troubled path.

Ok, so I applied the friends and family discount at orange (which, take note is a web-only offer) and it all seemed to go through fine and dandy.  Then a message came up, “There’s a problem with your order, please phone 08….blah blah blah.”  So I did.  They took some extra information off me, more addresses etc and then said, “That’s fine sir.  Your charge will be £45 a month and nothing for the phone.”

“Great!” said I, “That will be reduced to £36 a month after the discount right?”

“Erm, no sorry sir, we cannot apply the friends and family discount over the phone.”

“Hmm” says I, “I didn’t order it over the phone, I ordered it over the internet.”

“Yes but you are ordering on the phone now”, says Orange moron.

“Only because you told me to ring you!” says an increasingly exasperated wannabe Orange customer.

“I’m sorry sir the Friends and Family is an on-line discount only” he replies.

“…” says I.

“I pulled strings so you’d get through the credit check sir!” he says.

“….” says I.

“Sir?”

“Can I reapply on-line with my friends and family discount?” I ask meekly.

“No sir, once you’ve applied once the system will automatically redirect you every time to us.”

 *SMASH, SMASH, GNASH, GNASH*

 “Thank-you but goodbye” says I.

 “Sir?”

How did this pass me by!

A sample of the hoard.

In my very own county of Staffordshire a mammoth hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure was discovered late last year.  David Starkey tritely puts it as “Gangland bling” in a more recent article.  Astonishingly, it’s the largest ever find of gold and silver in the British Isles with some 1,800 objects excavated by the end of the dig.  There’s an excellent interactive description of the find provided by The Guardian.  To give you some idea of the value of the hoard, around three years back a piece of a hilt of an Anglo-Saxon sword was bought by the British Museum for £125,000  – this hoard contains 31 such pieces.  Even with my basic maths skills, I can work that out to be nearly £4 million.  That’s just for the bits of poxy sword, never mind the gold and silver!