Is it still raining there

Steven is a bit pleased with his new phone which plays MP3s, has a memory stick and talks to his computer. It makes coffee in the morning, cleans the bathroom and washes the sheets. It's also a phone. Which means I have more phone photos to share. In an episode of quid pro quo he waited for me while I had a haircut (at last!) and here you see the work in progress as well as a 'before' shot at breakfast at the local greasy spoon. Oh, and the hairdresser is from Adelaide!

Here also is a happy little snap of Jason and I cooling our heels in Chemille, France at the campsite I talked about earlier with the river and man made beach. Jason is looking very spunky and happy. Holidays suck, don't they? We did spend some time discussing how truly awful it all was.

And finally the railway bridge - Arna took this photo seated at the window of my flat. Brave (or stupid) souls risk life and limb to graffiti on the sides. We were attempting to catch the Eurostar as it went past but frankly we were too busy eating my delicious lamb roast and drinking too much wine to have the camera to hand at the right moments.

Well if things had gone according to plan I wouldn't be blogging right now - I've been expecting a phonecall from our Dave who flew in to Heathrow about 5 hours ago. He's going straight to Paris in about 3 hours and it's looking like he's breaking our brunch date. As his phone isn't on roaming and he may not be sure how to dial my numbers it looks like we'll be catching up when he gets back to London on the weekend.

I went to a dance party on a barge on Saturday - it was quite nice being down by the river (Thames) despite it being a wet night. Oddly enough it turned out to be a birthday party for one of the girls who DJed although tickets were sold to it - so I suggested to Steven that we sell tickets to our party next month at say £10 a pop and see if we can't pay for the booze that way! Cheeky, huh? Anyway, we were keen for dancing after a few drinks but we found that the flyer for the event which advertised funk and techno was perhaps forgotten by the DJs who pumped out drum and bass for a couple of hours. We just weren't up to that speed, if you understand me. At least upstairs was some improv jazz with a guitarist, two saxophonists and a trumpeter who jammed for most of the night. There were some VJs too which gave us something to look at in the pauses of conversation.

Speaking of cheeky, I rocked down to Electric Avenue yesterday to grab ingredients for my green chicken curry. There is a food market there every day and plenty of halal butchers and fish mongers. And whilst Alex managed to buy turkey rather than chicken in Germany (or was that France?) due to a translation problem, the 'chicken' breast I brought home yesterday looked far beyond a growth hormone anomaly. Oh yes, it was turkey. This wasn't me picking up a package and thinking it was chicken. Oh no, this is me asking the butcher for chicken thigh fillets and him saying they only had breast. No wonder it was only £2.

And if you weren't already convinced that everything is for sale and everything has a price, check this letter to Steven from BT. Okay so they're offering this service for free - but how did it become a service?

"Dear Mr xxx
Have you noticed that there are some people who view your telephone line as just another hot lead, and your front door as one more closed sale? We believe that interruptions to your daily life, caused by unsolicited sales calls and the pushy attitude adopted by some sales callers, are unacceptable. That is why we are offering you a new, free service called BT Privacy. It includes free BT Caller Display, which shows you who's calling, enabling you to decide whether or not to answer the phone. Plus there's automatic registration with the Telephone Preference Service which helps reduce the unsolicited sales calls you receive. In addition, we've included a sticker to help you deter door-to-door sales callers... You can rest assured that, at BT, we respect your privacy. And now, with the help of free BT Privacy, you can make sure everyone else does too."

Hmmm, I think we're talking irony in the non-Alanis sense. Steven has scrawled across the letter in black texta "My privacy is not for sale!". He will post it back to BT. Do you think BT will respect that? Or will they send another letter in six months... Or call.