My reproduction hall clock (grandmother) gains 10 minutes a day.  We've all got used to it though and do the appropriate sums before leaving the house. 

There's a joke in there somewhere.  Sadly I can only think of rude ones.... 

Tommo

A compromise, perhaps, Mary. Arty cards only to those who will appreciate them: charity cards to the rest (and maybe investigate a few more charities, too).

Unfortunately you've just reminded me that I'll have to start designing and printing before long.... Grrrrr.

 I found a couple of attractive offers for charity cards in the brochure circulated by the Musicians Benevolent Fund.   

Help, my brains are jangling!  In a fit of exasperation over the utter uselessness of my service provider (bitter laugh), last week I arranged to sign up with Virgin for their `phone and Broadband package. When the contract arrived today I noticed a couple of errors regarding my username and password so I `phoned them. Oh wow, did I ever open up a can of worms! After being bounced around five departments, grrr, I discovered that the guy who signed me up gave me information that was completely wrong. He told me that I didn`t need to contact my existing provider because Virgin would do that. Wrong, apparently. He said that I could keep my existing landline number (this is where it all starts to go hideously wrong). Nope. I can only keep my number if I contact BT and ask them to contact my provider and ask them to port it over. Spoke to BT who said that they couldn`t do that. I then discovered that Virgin did contact my provider because BT had received a cancellation notice on my landline. To my horror I realised that this meant that my landline was due to actually be disconnected in ten days time! Shriek!!!  I have received no notice of this.  BT then said I have to get back to my provider and ask them the cancel the cancellation, if you see what I mean.  What has absolutely incensed me is that my provider was able to arrange for my line to be disconnected without notifying me and, even though it`s a line provided by BT, they didn`t even question it and appear to have no control over it !!

I have now contacted Onetel, cancelled my disconnection in order that I can `phone BT back, tell them what I`ve done and then they can ......... Forget it I`ve lost the will to live   I`m tempted to cancel the whole thing now. This fiasco does not bode well.

If everything goes very quiet in my direction after Friday, you`ll know why. Pass me the smelling salts.....

The whole thing's a minefield, Mort, believe me: I've plenty of experience of the whole sorry mess from both sides. The main fault here undoubtedly lies with Virgin: their guy was obviously not properly trained. I'd estimate that fewer than a third of the people dealing with these issues in any organisation really understand the system completely, and that's not just those who sell it too you, but the people who are responsible for technical back-up, too.

The problem is that in these target-driven days of call centre slaves on the minimum wage, nobody has realised that it's yet another case of paying peanuts and getting monkeys: the people who could do the job far better won't do it for those paltry rates, and conditions are so abysmal that there's a huge 'churn' rate - people coming, and leaving quite soon afterwards. This is the prime cause of under-trained staff at such centres: by the time most of them can actually do the job without using a script or prompts and are able to think for themselves, the thought they have is to leave.

I've sat in on management meetings over and over again where the poor quality of their staff and the detrimental effect it's having on business has been bemoaned endlessly, yet the moment higher wages are suggested there's an immediate dogmatic statement that it's not an option.

Don't ever ring Virgin trains if you can possibly avoid it. I buy the cheapest possible ticket online (and some of them are very cheap if you book in advance) and then shut up. The system is impossible for anyone to understand.

With a senior railcard (which I suppose is about a hundred years off in the case of Tinners  ) I can get from Liverpool to London and back for £16.50. It's uncomfortable and boring but it's CHEAP.