SIM card woes

Thank goodness I'm surfacing again, and starting to feel normal after five days with a heavy cold, leaving me quite sleepy and lethargic most of the time. After a week of dampness the sun is shining again too. Nevertheless, I got into the office for a few hours yesterday and for some lectures on St Mark's Gospel in the Cathedral Lady Chapel on Wednesday. This was part of the diocesan clergy Continuing Ministerial Education programme. Suppressing embarrassing noisy coughs was hard work and left me with an aching rib cage, but I was glad I made the effort, as I much appreciated both the content and the stimulus to fresh thinking it provided.

Rachel and Jasmine arrived yesterday morning from Canada, and went by train to Kenilworth for a weekend with Kath, Anto and Rhiannon. The two little girls are so eager to meet up again, as are the big girls! Rachel bought a UK SIM card for her phone and this has stopped it working altogether. That's how smart it is. Such punishment is meted out by phone companies and manufacturers in cahoots with each other to anyone daring to look for a less costly way of making phone calls.

Ironically, the price of a basic phone have now fallen to the extent that you can now buy one that will take many standard brands of SIM card in Tesco for only ten quid. I guess the only question is - can you use your home-side SIM card to copy the data it contains to a new phone's internal memory, and save yourself the hassle of keying in all the data again? Or will doing that nix the SIM? If you do these things only when you travel, and you don't travel every often, you're left at the mercy of 'experts' and big monopolies - which, of course, include the supermarket giants that sell cheap unlocked phones, and SIM cards at their checkouts.

Richard, our favourite carpenter and handyman has been with us this last few days, re-pointing the bay window exterior walls, and yesterday he spent preparing the ground for re-laying the path up to the front door. The path's red and black Victorian chequer pattern quarry tiles have come loose and broken as a result of much moving of heavy objects in and out of the house over the past couple of years. Richard has found the same colour and quality  tiles - commonplace in this area, so the final result will be as pleasing to see as it would have been to the first occupants 115 years ago.