Anyway the point being was that I was gazing out of the window when I saw a couple of people heading towards my car, looking around themselves as they were going. ‘What’s going on here?’ I thought to myself but was slightly relieved to see that they were just dumping advertising leaflets on the windscreens of cars in the vicinity and that they had just happened to start with mine.

Anyway, they did a few more cars, and then suddenly seemed to disappear, which seemed odd, as they’d had an armload of leaflets (once I’d figured out what it was that they were carrying).

However when I finished my coffee and went back to the car, I discovered on the way another car which suggested to me exactly how they had managed to get rid of their leaflets so quickly…

Now, I don’t know how the owner of the car felt when he or she got back to it, but my reaction to this would not have been to think favourably about the store in question, given the fact that when I took the single leaflet off my own car windscreen I was rather tempted to crumple it into a ball, walk into the shop, and toss it casually onto their floor since I’m well…

… not really a fan of unsolicited advertising.

But I think it’s fair to say the owner of that car would be unlikely to be wanting to purchase furniture from the store in question, irrespective of how much interest free credit is on offer…

I told him that I’d buy him a treat when I started my new job, and he asked for the ‘Bred For War’ boxed set which has just come out featuring Dr. Who and the Sontarans (a Jon Pertwee story, two Tom Baker stories, and one story which sees Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton appearing together).

He’s become quite a fan of Patrick Troughton — despite the fact he keeps wondering what has happened to the colour and what is even more alarming is that I appear to be developing this same Dr. Who-itis.

I’ve found myself buying some of the old Dr. Whos on DVD for me (as opposed to the usual stuff where he gets a DVD of his choice every now and again for a treat), and I’ve been picking up some of the Dr. Who DVDs from the 1960s — ones that I’ve never seen before, but in some cases I read the books — and so I’ve picked up three black and white DVDs in the last week or so.

Dr. Who ‘Lost In Time’ is a collection of the surviving episodes of the serials which have been lost in their entirety — in total, there are 18 episodes, ranging across the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton eras. But it’s a little weird because there’s not so much in the way of continuity: episodes 1 and 3 of The Crusade, episodes 2 and 4 of The Moonbase, the few surviving clips of ‘The Tenth Planet’, the first appearance of the cybermen and so on.

Dr. Who ‘Tomb Of The Cybermen’ is one that was believed lost since it was originally screened in 1967 until it turned up in 1992 in a TV station in Hong Kong, and features ‘old style’ cybermen (back in the days where it looked like they were wearing a wet suit painted silver — they were — with associated wires stuck randomly to the outside). Obviously, watching with today’s expectations on special effects, they are somewhat … shit … but the plot is actually quite good, and the character presented by Patrick Troughton is rapidly becoming my favourite doctor, despite having only seen a handful of them…

Dr Who ‘The Seeds Of Death’ is a six-parter that features the Martian ‘Ice Warriors’ who are one of the few “classic” Doctor Who monsters that I’ve never actually seen on the screen before. And I’m really looking forward to watching it. Which is the worrying thing.

I mean, I’ve always liked Dr. Who, don’t get me wrong, but after starting to watch these Patrick Troughton stories, I think I’m in danger of becoming an official ‘fan’. I’m even starting to feel somewhat narked that various episodes from the early days were wiped because now I won’t get the chance to watch them something which wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest six months ago.

So this is a warning for anyone else who might be tempted to watch any of the old Patrick Troughton Dr Who adventures — you do so at your own risk. You might even end up a Whovian, and I’m not sure whether that is even curable…

I just thought I’d share with you some tales of my sporting prowess. Remember me mentioning the inter-departmental five a side team?

Well, just look at the trophy I got presented with!

I was presented with this trophy for “services to goalkeeping”, and also picked up another medal. Not bad, eh?

The exact award reads — and I know it’s difficult to see with the light reflecting off it:

Services to Goalkeeping
Girls Allowed
Council 5aS League Spring 2008Trophy

Of course, if I was going to be completely honest about it, I’d have to point out that the image (particularly when viewed on flickr) is larger than the actual trophy, which is about three inches high and made out of gold-coloured plastic.

I’d also have to point out that my colleage, who was acting as team manager for the “Girls Allowed” 5-a-side team (so called because … well, we had a girl on our team), arranged a team ‘awards’ session where there were 5 awards to be issued to be voted on by the team members … so it was only amongst the ten or so people who had turned out for us, only two of which had played in goal.

And technically, I’d have to point out that every team member received a medal. And that the team itself didn’t exactly set the league alight, conceding 100 goals in our 12 games, and only winning three of them (and two of those were walkovers because the opposition failed to field a team).

So perhaps I shouldn’t be completely honest about it, and instead allow you to continue thinking that I’ve won some ginormous cup for being in the Petr Čech league of goalkeeping. Yes, on reflection, I think that’s the best policy….

It was a bit odd today, as at least half the department weren’t in today anyway, but it’s been a weird sort of week anyway. After all, you don’t work somewhere for nine and a half years without developing some attachments.

And you don’t necessarily want to — or expect to — sever all of those attachments.

Particularly since that’s where I met my wife, for example…

But I have made a lot of friends there. I know a few of them read this site regularly, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to thank them for being valued colleagues over the years, and tell them that they aren’t going to get rid of me that easily anyway, as I’ll still be turning up to nights out — assuming that they don’t manage to keep the details a closely guarded secret!

They are a good bunch of people. Not perfect — but frankly apart from me, not many people are — but a good bunch nonetheless. I count a significant number of them as friends rather than colleagues (particularly since they aren’t colleagues anymore). But I’ve enjoyed working with them, and would like to wish them the best of luck too.

I’d also like to thank them for my leaving gifts, which were much appreciated — I’ll start drinking some of ‘em soon!

So thanks. And as I’m not really one for goodbyes, plus I’m planning on turning up like the proverbial bad penny on a variety of official and unofficial nights out, I’ll instead leave it with Del Boy, who can say it best…

No, not goodbye Margaret, just … bonjourDerek Trotter in Only Fools And Horses Series 3: Homesick

And just as importantly, buying anything from any of the spammers continues to fund their spamming activities. So repeat after me…

I, [NAME], do solemnly promise to you, my fellow internet users, that I will do my bit to fight the problem of spam, resist the temptation of weight loss adverts, fake Rolex watches, pump-and-dump stock market scams, and ways to increase the size of my body parts. And so henceforth, I make this pledge. To not click on links in unsolicited mail and never buy goods advertised via spam.Sophos Blog: Sophos Spam Pledge

[Image used with permission: thanks to Sophos]

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m changing jobs next week and so I’ve had to prepare to take home all the personal crap I’ve accumulated in nine and a half years with one employer — which appears to consist of a family photo, about nine and a half years worth of payslips, a dilbert desk calendar (much to the disgust of my colleagues who were hoping that would remain), and perhaps least usefully, a little device that was embedded in a chocolate advent calendar back in December 1999 that produces a Bart Simpson laugh when you press it.

You know, important stuff.

Meanwhile, all my projects and stuff have been passed over to other people now and have become SEPs and — what? An SEP? Oh, it’s from “Life, The Universe and Everything”:

“An SEP,” he said, “is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot.”Ford Prefect, in Douglas Adams’ ‘Life, The Universe, and Everything’

So, anyway, all of my projects and systems are now SEPs and I’m very much winding down now I’ve only got two days to go (well, about one and a half, given my current flexi time balance), and meanwhile I’m trying to get myself all nice and sorted for the new job.

This required Sorting Out The Study.

Yes, it did require capitalisation. My study has traditionally been… well … a pile of books with a computer in it.

I decided that this wasn’t the most efficient or effective use of space for an area where I’m going to be working three full days a week (let alone the evenings spent wittering on on the blog as per usual) so I decided I needed to convert the small room into two areas.

So I’ve now got a desk area, comprising of a desk, my PC, a printer, a scanner, enough USB ports to shake a stick at, as well as the aforementioned Dilbert desk calendar. But — and here’s the clever bit — I also have a nice lounge chair in the other half of the room, so that while the desk area is my workspace, I still have ‘relax space’ in the room for chilling out, reading books or listening to music.

Not only that, but the reorganisation has created sufficient space for me to put another set of bookshelves in the room. Yes, I do know that many smaller public libraries have less books than me, but that’s not the point…

There’s just one teensy problem. The lounge chair I’ve pinched is part of the wife’s set of wicker/cane furniture that sits nicely in the conservatory and she’s starting to add the words “now” and “or else” to her demands that I return it to its original location.

Darn.

(For those of you not up on football stats, the Premier League is England’s top division. Below that, you have the Championship, then League 1, then League 2. Below that is what is referred to as ‘non-league football’ and there you have the Blue Square Conference as the premier non-league division, and the lowest division that is national - as below the Blue Square Conference, you have two regional divisions, Blue Square North and Blue Square South).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t possible for Gateshead to continue winning all of their games, and they slipped down the table a bit, eventually finishing in 3rd place, enough to secure a play-off spot (the champions get promoted automatically, positions 2-5 play off for one remaining promotion spot). Although we did manage to finish as the joint highest scorerst in any of Englands top divisions, scoring 93 league goals (and a total of 133 now in all competitions this season).

The Unibond Play Offs take a slightly different format to that I’ve seen elsewhere: instead of the familiar two-leg semi final, and a single final at a neutral venue, both semi-final and final are one-leg affairs held at the home ground of one of the two clubs. Which club? — whichever one finished higher in the league.

Last tuesday we disposed of Eastwood Town, with a comfortable 4-0 victory, to take us to the play off final to face Buxton (who had beaten 2nd placed Witton Albion on penalties). As Buxton had finished 5th, we had home advantage, and so I made my way to Gateshead International Stadium yesterday with my 4-year old BTP to watch the game.

Gateshead had played Buxton twice in the league in the previous month — winning 4-0 and 5-0 — and so were obviously favourites, but as those wins had been achieved after Buxton had secured their play-off spot, they didn’t have as much to play for at that time as us (who could theoretically just about have won the title).

As I got inside, I realised that it was busy. It had been a few years since I’d last been there, during which time the average crowd had declined from the 550 or so that used to turn up to the Vauxhall Conference games in the 1990s to an average of around 280 this season. But this was far busier than that…

The play off semi final had attracted over 500, but this was the busiest I’d seen the ground, even eclipsing games against teams like Barnet or Wycombe Wanderers who were about to achieve promotion to the football league — in total 1402 people made their way to the stadium yesterday.

The only question was whether all of those ‘glory hunters’ (if you can ever class a non-league fan as a glory hunter) would see anything that would make them want to come back the following season.

After about ten minutes, I realised that while the standard of football, fitness and ball control was far above anything I would be able to achieve, if was still a massive step down from the level of football normally seen on Match of the Day. But it wasn’t just high-tempo clogging, there was some great intelligent play, overlapping runs and generally an entertaining game that was worth watching.

In the first half, Gateshead had had all of the possession and pressure, but hadn’t created many real chances and I was beginning to worry that Buxton would carve something out when the second half started, but instead it was former Newcastle United defender Kris Gate who put Gateshead in front five minutes into the second half, weaving through three challenges before planting the ball past the goalkeeper to settle home nerves.

In the following fifteen minutes, Gateshead created a few more chances, but the closest they game to a second was headed off the line by a defender with the goalkeeper well beaten. Buxton seemed to realise that they were still in the game, and revitalised by three substitutions (and the referee seemingly not thinking that holding a Gateshead player in a headlock and wrestling him to the ground not even worthy of a caution) they began to exert pressure on Gateshead for the first time in the game.

As the game moved towards the eightieth minute, the question seemed more ‘can Gateshead hang on’ than anything else: Buxton were camped in our half but despite this were still struggling to get the ball in our penalty area. And then in a flash, the game was put beyond doubt as a long clearance from defence found Brayson on the halfway line, who sprinted with the ball into the opposition penalty area and lifted the ball over the keeper to make it two-nil.

Game over, and the Buxton seemed to lose quite a bit of belief at that point as the final ten minutes of the game petered out…

…leaving Gateshead as the play off winners of the Unibond Premier League, and set to join the Blue Square North next season. Hurrah!

Will I be going again? Well, we’ll have to see what next season brings, but I enjoyed the afternoon out, and while I’m not expecting to visit every game next season, I’d be surprised if I don’t take in at least a few…

Nevertheless, I was intrigued to see the other week that Gateshead Council were offering one Last Chance to Get Carter — or rather, a last chance to visit the car park featured in said film — by opening up the normally closed parts of the car park to the public on the 26th and 27th of April.

As the building is scheduled for demolition, and it’s been dominating the Gateshead skyline for forty years, and it’s my last chance to visit it, and I think it’s an ugly monstrosity that should be knocked down, and I realise not everyone agrees with that (although most residents I speak to do), and I realise that some people who might have wanted to visit it won’t get the chance, so I decide to pay a visit.

I got to the car park about twenty past nine (with the plan to nip across to Newcastle, buy a phone and then get back for the opening of the upper levels of the car park at 10), but discovered that there were lots of people in the car park already, scattered around the lower levels and taking photographs.

I therefore decided to revise my plan, and visit the car park first, showing my little ‘un (who was out with me) the views from the car park across the Tyne, taking in the Millenium Bridge, the Sage, the Tyne Bridge and of course that shimmering vision of loveliness that is St James’ Park.

The staircase beyond level 6 is gated off, and is inaccessible to the general public, and a locked metal fence separated level 7 and below (publicly accessible) from levels 8 to 13 of the car park (deemed unsafe and inaccessible to the public). Once we’d signed a disclaimer saying that any injuries were entirely our own fault (or something like that), that we’d follow safety instructions and that we’d allow Gateshead Council to see any photos, There was therefore nothing to do but wait around for our the upper level to be opened.

We stood around for a while — getting into a conversation with a gentleman who told us that he had planned to buy the rooftop restaurant, but had been unable to sort out the plans (a glass-panelled rooftop restaurant area was included on the top of the car park, offering quite fantastic views across the area, but no-one actually ever took up residence there and it was never opened to the public) — who then advised we peer down by the north-eastern stairwell to see how much had been cleared out of nearby shops.

Rather fortuitously (because I was chatting to one of the safety stewards, who had just allowed my 4-year old son to borrow a hard hat prior to the tour) we were stood right next to the locked gate when someone asked everyone to form an orderly queue, and so we were the very first people in the queue.

Sure enough, the gate was unlocked and people were allowed through in batches of 10 to receive their hard hats, hand over their disclaimer forms and listen to the safety precautions. The safety precautions weren’t particularly onerous (don’t climb over the safety barriers), although when I enquired who I should send my photos to at Gateshead Council, he simply told me to take whatever photos I wanted.

(Therefore if anyone from the Council wants permission to use the photos for some official purposes, just give me a shout: I did try to pass them on, but couldn’t find out who I was supposed to pass them on to…)

There wasn’t much of note on level 8 of the car park, other than for some bizarre reason a big pile of cardboard boxes and a rusting cooker. The cooker I could have imagined being there for a while, but surely if the cardboard had been there any length of time, it would have rotted away…?

Levels 9 to 11 again had little of interest to offer: a safety steward stood on each level, the traffic-cones-and-tape security method keeping everyone awat from the outer edge of the levels so that there wasn’t particularly much to look at and you couldn’t really do much more than amble up to the higher levels…

…but once you got to level 12, there was no more ‘roof’ above you (except for the area taken up by the raised level of the rooftop restaurant) and you really started to get something more of a view.

From level 12 there were some really quite striking views across Gateshead, but none of the views were as striking as the images of the whitest of elephants: the rooftop restaurant atop a 13-storey car park that for some reason (maybe because it was on top of a 13-storey concrete lump?) failed to get off the ground and never opened.

What was somewhat surprising in all of this was just exactly how well behaved the 4-year old BTP was. After all, it’s a car park, hardly the most exciting thing in the world, but he seemed quite fascinated by the idea of going up to the car park levels that were normally locked, and when you factor in the fact that he had to wear a hard hat (”just like Bob the Builder”) it probably actually became something of an adventure…

…all it needed was for a Cyberman to appear from behind a pillar and it would have been just perfect for him…

The stairway to the condemned rooftop restaurant was slightly hidden by a strange concrete lattice pattern, but what was equally striking was that this particular part of the car park — much more than any other — seemed to have been the one targetted for graffiti (either that or it had been cleaned off everywhere except here, which would have been equally odd).

The graffiti could also be dated somewhat by the fact that one graffito was of a Pac-Man shape, which I can’t imagine was still ‘cool’ anywhere after the mid-80s. The other question in my head was whether Billy, Taylor and the other “S/land Blaggers” had now settled down into some ‘respectable’ roles in society such as being bank managers or such like.

Well, maybe not.

However, further evidence that it had indeed been some time since this part of the car park had been opened to the general public could be seen from the Pay and Display sign on level 12, which showed car parking charges of 30p for up to four hours (in contrast, this would be £1.60 today — but I guess a 533% raise in fees since over a 26 year or so period isn’t too bad, corresponding to about 5.7% annually).

Oddly enough, I’ve been unable to locate any definitive date at which the upper levels were closed off to the public, only that it happened “in the 1980s”, presumably after 1982 (as the sign references a 1982 parking order) and presumably prior to 1986, as that’s when the “Tyne & Wear County Council” referenced on the pay and display sign ceased to be…

If I had to guess, I’d lean towards the earlier side of that — but that’s without any solid foundation (possibly an appropriate term as deep mine tunnels underneath the car park caused cracking and delayed the opening until 1969, after the car park was strengthened).

Nevertheless, there is a good view from the top, and one which the apologists for the car park would no doubt say strengthens their claim to have it saved. There’s a view of Gateshead’s Jackson Street on which a Subway store has somewhat inevitably appeared as part of the growing homogenisation of town and city centres across the world, particularly since it’s going to be replaced by Tesco. Some people would argue that’s why unique buildings like the Trinity Square Multi Storey Car Park should be preserved.

I don’t.

I agree that individuality is better than uniformity in general, and indeed would be keen to preserve structures which have a relevance to the local community, or show architectural merit or suchlike. As a resident, I don’t think this does have any relevance to me, or show any merit at all (of course, this is where I disagree with the pro-car park movement), and I don’t think the fact it featured in a 1971 film should be enough to save it from demolition.

Fortunately for me, it appears that Gateshead Council and Spenhill (the Tesco subsidiary) are quite keen on knocking the thing down and indeed I heard a rumour today — the veracity of which may be in doubt, since it came from the man who assured me he had been going to buy the rooftop restaurant — that a closure and demolition date would be announced in the next few weeks.

I came across this dead bird on level 12 of the car park, which to me sums up the car park itself.

Once, it might have been something that actually looked quite nice. Now it’s just a hollow husk of what it once was, with its internal skeletal structure visible through the skin in many places and it really, truly, ought to have been disposed of before now…

But once at the foot of the car park again, I did manage to find something that I would miss.

Not the car park itself, but Gateshead Indoor Market, which was constructed under the car park and is obviously part of the same demolition job. The Indoor Market has already closed — I think on around 9th January this year (certainly around then) — but there were a lot of shops in there that were useful: butchers, bakers, cobblers, barbers, second hand book shops, and the pet shop that both our cats and my mother’s cats came from.

You know, the sort of shops that you would expect to have in any shopping area, useful, but not the sort of shop you’d generally go to a specific shopping centre for, when a trip to the supermarket and the nearby DIY superstore will net you much the same sort of thing.nearby wherever you are. Except maybe for the bookshop (not so many second hand bookshops about now) and the pet shop (now you’ll probably have to go to the equivalent out of town pet superstore…).

And so, with one last look at the car park itself — from a rather unusual angle at the bottom of the south west stairs — we took off for Newcastle in search of that mobile phone I was talking about the other day.

And, if for any reason you’ve taken a particular interest in these photographs of the car park, after going to have your head examined, you might like to view the images in my flickr photostream tagged ‘car_park’ and ‘trinity_square’. There’s another 20 or so…

Owing to the fact that my new job won’t involve working in the same office as my wife and the friends I tend to go drinking with, I had a sneaking suspicion that I was likely to be spending more on telephone calls.

So I decided to go for one of those ‘pay monthly’ contract things. This is a little unusual for me. You see, the main reason I’ve been on pay-as-you-go for so long is that I understand exactly how these monthly contract wotsits work.

You know, where you work out how much you currently spend per month on your phone (£12 to £15), add a little bit to cater for the increased usage and then end up with a contract that’s setting you back £60 a month for the next four years because you get a phone with a camera and so many other add ons that not only can you make calls whilst on the lavatory, it will wipe your backside for you.

Well not me, I said. So on thursday I took a half-day off from work and headed across to Newcastle to work out what the best value phone I could get would be…

So, working on the assumption that I’ll use the phone at least 50% more, I was looking for something in the price range £20-25 per month. I was previously with Virgin Mobile — and had been for several years without any problem, so called in there first.

For £25 I could get a free phone, 200 minutes and 200 texts per month on a 12-month deal or 300/300 if I signed up for 18 months. Oh, and once you’re 6 weeks into the contract, they’ll credit your account with £100 so it works out at about £19.45 per month if you take the 18 month option. Not bad at all, I thought, and I nearly signed up then, but thought that would be a little naive.

After all, not only do I not know what the ‘opposition’ would give me, but I don’t know which of the bewildering variety of phones will be most appropriate for me. I want a phone which I can use to — and I know this is going to sound old-fashioned — make phone calls on. Text messaging is another essential.

Camera is not necessary, and unless it’s of good quality is not worth bothering with. The ability to play music is not necessary (that’s what I have an MP3 player for), but the fact that the manual available in the Virgin Mobile store allows me to compare phones as to whether they offer:

• picture messaging,
• animated screensavers,
• picture phonebooks,
• video capture,
• FM radio,
• calendars,
• loudspeakers,
• built in flash for the camera,
• camera zoom facility,
• bluetooth (blueteeth?),
• memory size,
• standby time,
• talk time,
• screen resolution,
• camera resolution,
• tri- or quad- band, and
• SAR level (how much radiated gubbins you get off of it when you’re using it)

Unfortunately, for the most part this simply allows me to differentiate between whether or not a particular phone has a set of features that I don’t need in the first place.

I can’t remember which comedian it was, but I’m fairly certain I’m using someone else’s joke when I say that I’m a believer that a phone is for talking on. I don’t expect it to take pictures (use a camera) or play music, any more than I would expect to also use my washing machine to watch the telly on…

The comparison chart does not tell me the things which are of importance to me: colour, size, and whether or not I like the look of it.

So I asked the guy what he’d recommend, and he suggested the ‘Nokia 6500 Classic’. Hmm. According to the chart, that retails at £260 (if you pay-as-you-go), but it’s free on £25 per month. But — and I don’t know how big a but it is — it doesn’t offer an infrared port, has only 215 minutes talk time, and doesn’t offer an FM radio.

Are these key features?

In order to avoid the issue entirely, I decide instead to first investigate the other networks on offer, to work out where I’ll get the best deal as regards talk/texts and then I’ll worry about what phones are available.

T-moblie would offer me — for “only” £22.50 — offering me 170 minutes or 340 texts per month (i.e. if you send texts it uses up your minutes and vice versa). Hmm. Well, forgive me for saying, but isn’t that deal considerably worse? On the bright side, the guy trying to sell me the phone did describe the 170 minutes as “only 10 minutes less than three hours”.

Well, yes, but that’s still 130 minutes less than Virgin Mobile were offering. And as I’d already told him Virgin Mobile would give me 300 minutes for less than that, I think he knew he would struggle to get the sale. Plus I already knew I get Virgin Mobile reception both where I live and in my new place of employment…

I peered into ‘Phones 4 U’, ‘Orange’ and ‘The Carphone Warehouse’ but couldn’t find any deals anywhere which seemed to match the 300/300 for (effectively) £19 that I’d be getting from Virgin Mobile.

So. Virgin Mobile it was then.

(Which gave me the title I rejected for this post: “Why I’m still a Virgin”. If you’re wondering why I rejected that, it was mostly because the jokes about the Virgin brand name and sexual virginity became over-done and tiresome about fourteen years ago.)

Should I go for the recommended phone or pick a different one? Well, as I didn’t have my bank details with me on thursday, I couldn’t sign up to a contract then, thus allowing me the opportunity to research the relevant phones on the internet. Without using a mouse, unfortunately.

This limited the usefulness of the information I could obtain, but what I did discover was that from looking at the top four phones (by brochure ‘price’) that would be available free on my chosen payment plan, the Sven Goran Eriksson K850i was getting the best marks (ranging from 68/100 to 96/100 — but always the highest rated of the four phones).

Okay, there’s obviously a lot of personal preference to be thrown in here, depending on what sort of buttons you like, what sort of screen you like and so on, but I happen to like the look of this phone as it happens.

So what features does it have then — bearing in mind I only really want something that I can talk and text with.

Ooh! It’s got an FM radio. Well, I do actually quite like that, as my current one has an FM radio, and I’ve used that for listening to the football on a saturday afternoon a few times…

Oh! It’s only got one game. Less of an issue, since I’ve never played games on my mobile phone for about three years.

Ooh! It’s got 3G. Whatever the implications of that are…

What the…? It’s got a higher resolution camera on it than my camera has got. Does anyone actually need a 5 megapixel camera resolution?

And the Sven– sorry, Sony Ericsson one only has 547 MB memory. Some of the others have 2 GB. Do I not want one with more memory? On the other hand, how much memory does ‘Dave W’ and an 11-digit number take up, anyway?

And do I want a phone with more games?

So what phone did I get in the end then? Well, although I have some reluctance to share — most notably because I’m expecting someone to comment saying “oh, you didn’t want to get that one, you wanted to get…” — it would seem that the entire post has been about me buying a new mobile phone so it would be a bit of a waste not to tell you which one.

In the end, I went for the Sony Ericsson K850i. I like the colour, I like the buttons (more ’separated’ than normal) and while I have traditionally preferred ‘flip top’ phones to the ones with keypads that lock or ’slide’, there simply weren’t any flip top ones available that I liked.

So now I am faced with another dilemma.

Do I spend the next week deciphering the manual and customising every single last feature on the phone and having it set up with wallpaper I want, a screensaver I like and so on, or do I just pretend that I actually did want the default ringtone, and use the saved time to go out and do something less boring instead?

Now this isn’t an official term (at least, so far as I know), but from the contexts I’ve seen it used in, I understand this to mean someone who has a disability that affects the way they access computers and the internet.

This is to reflect that while someone who uses a wheelchair to get around more easily may not need any special adaptations in order to use a computer (and doesn’t need sites to be specifically designed to be accessible) but someone who can’t see, can’t move their arms, or don’t have sufficiently fine motor control to use something like a mouse are likely to encounter problems without adaptive technology and accessible websites.

And this week I’ve been internet disabled myself, through the most mundane of methods.

My mouse broke.

At first, I thought this was an absolute disaster because the mouse pointer simply wouldn’t move around the screen, and I thought that there was a fault with my PC. Fortunately, attempting same on the GLW’s laptop returned exactly the same results, convincing me that the problem was much cheaper and only the mouse needed replacing.

It was one of them optical mouse thingummies you see. They’re much more convenient than the ‘ball’ ones I find… apart from when they break.

And this left me without the ability to use a mouse. Well, technically I still had the ability to use a mouse, just not the equipment, but the net effect was that since wednesday of last week (and until I went to town this morning), I’ve been restricted to keyboard only access to my home PC.

You’d think that someone with a passion for accessibility like myself would thrive on this, enjoy the opportunity to try out sites without using a mouse and experience a lot of the real-world problems faced by others on a day-to-day basis.

Well, bollocks to that. After half an hour I was saying:

I simply … cannot … believe how many fucking links I am expected to fucking tab through before I get to the fucking thing that I fucking want. Aaarrghh!! What am I doing over there? How the fuck am I fucking supposed to tell where I am on this fucking page anyway…! Ah, fuck this, I’m switching the fucking thing off and going to the pub…

So what I will say is, even though I appreciated how important keyboard accessibility was already, I appreciate it even more now. Okay?

And if you don’t think it can really be that unpleasant, then unplug your mouse and just try to go about your normal business on the PC. Go on. That’s not ‘ooh, I’ll look at this pretty page’, but actually try to accomplish a task. Check your bank balance. Book some theatre tickets. And when you’ve finished swearing, plug your mouse back in and see what a difference it makes.

Oh, and thank you Mr. Mouse. You don’t get the appreciation you deserve…