Should have been labelled...

The aftermath of the recent IT fiasco at British Airways reminds me of a funny story which should be filed under the "should have labelled it" category.

In my early 20's I took a trip to Edinburgh and stayed in a cheap guesthouse. I also took my "games console" (a Philips CDi, if anyone remembers those!).

The room was a bit sparse on sockets, especially near the TV, but there was one with a 12 volt adaptor already in it... I looked to see where is was going and what it was powering, but it didn't seem to be anything in the room. So, i turned it off, and nothing seemed to change, so I unplugged it, plugged in my CDi, fired up the TV and thought nothing more of it.

Next morning, I was rudely awakened by a knock on the door and a TV engineer asking if my TV was working. I'd played my video games with no problem, so "yes" was the answer. There was some confusion, as every other guest in the guesthouse had reported their TV not working.

It transpires they meant there was no signal - and the TV company had been out since dawn clambering all over the roof to trace the fault, starting from the aerial backwards.

Well, you know where this is heading.

It turns out that adaptor powered the TV booster box in some cupboard somewhere - so I had killed everyone's terrestrial signal by unplugging it. 

The proprietor was fuming and wanted to charge me the whole call out fee. Despite being a nervous 20-something-year-old, I refused. He said we were not entitled to use the electricity in the room. I said there was a TV, kettle in the room, so he was talking nonsense. And if he had critical infrastructure powered from a guest room, it should be labelled.

(In the end I gave him everything I had in my wallet as a gesture of goodwill, which was about 28 quid; I think the call out fee was 60 something)

So - a 10p label would have saved a £60 cost to the business...

BA, take note.... 

When is a holiday not a holiday?

We've now returned from our Scottish holiday, taking in 5 days of the Edinburgh Fringe and a trip to the Highlands. It's been a wonderful time away, my nails have grown substantially, and despite the food and whisky I only seem to have put on a pound in weight. 

Like many "holidays" it turned out to be rather busy and many of the things I thought I would do in my downtime (a lot of writing, for example) just didn't get done. 

Here's a run down of some of the things we got up to:

• We saw about a dozen shows, not including the freebies and impromptu acts in streets and bars. This included big names such as Rich Hall, Sarah Millican, Ed Byrne and Dave Gorman (who was brilliant) as well as less well-known acts such as James Acaster and Andrew Lawrence (also exceptional); of course, not forgetting our favourite magicians Barry and Stuart. 
• We frequented The Whiski Rooms - a wonderful bar, bistro and whisky shop, providing exceptional food and great live Scottish Music. 
• We woke up at 5.45am on our first day thanks to Veolia coming to empty the bins at the travelodge. Well done folks. 
• We walked between 20 and 30 miles over the week, as tracked by DeviceLocator and Google Latitude on my iPhone. That helped keep the weight down.
• We avoided blisters by wearing state of the art Rohan footwear. 
• We fed a Squirrel in Princes Street gardens and watched it burying his food. 
• We discovered bumblebees going nuts over Oregano and Marjoram. 
• We drove 1200 miles. 
• We had a spa day at Bannatynes in Edinburgh to try and recover. It really helped!
• I processed a few photos while on the move, but most still have to be done :) 
• We did some "baby sitting" with my niece Chloe, who was wonderful entertainment. 
• We gave an impromptu talk about bumblebees to a nursery of twelve 3 and 4 year olds. We managed to succesfully keep them entertained for an hour and got a wonderful thankyou card made by them all.
• We did a circular tour round the back of Loch Ness to soak up the scenery and make the best of a window in the weather. 
• I had a meeting with Cafe Beag who agreed to display and sell my scottish photos
• Roy Bridge post office also agreed to stock and sell my photos
• I had a very interesting and productive meeting with Me On My Wall canvas company who have agreed to licensing some of my images for their Highland Collection of canvases. This is a really exciting complement to my Scottish prints, which will see them on display in some prime locations.  

Here's a mock of up what's coming:

example canvas

Not a moment was wasted - my last meeting took me to within 15 minutes of my planned leaving time for the journey home and I still had to pack! Most of my photo processing, blogging and writing all had to go on the back burner and  didn't get done. But as you can see, it was a very productive and busy time nonetheless, and I was really delighted to be making progress with getting the photography "out there". All part of the long term Scottish plan.