First of all, it’s only fair to mention that I do like your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.

Now that’s out of the way, let me suggest that you’ve enacted a strategic error by making your branch on the Strand in London part of an easyInternetCafé. This allow me to complain online about your service literally seconds after being subject to it.

To be fair, the service itself would have been it OK had your staff been willing to accept a Scottish banknote. For future reference, let me explain.

1. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom.
2. The currency of Scotland is pounds sterling – the same as in the rest of the UK.
3. There are lots of people in London who don’t live there. Some have travelled from Scotland.
4. Scottish banknotes are legal tender throughout the UK and therefore people travelling from Scotland need not go to a bureau de change to change “Scottish money” into “English money”. Gosh, it’s not true. See the comments…

All I wanted was a cookie. I didn’t even particularly want a cookie, but I needed change for the slot machine to get my internet access. So you’ve lost out on a transaction and you’ve annoyed me. To avoid this happening in future, I suggest you accept legal tender currency when presented with it.

Oh, and I don’t like your Phish Food flavour ice cream.

Love,
Will

An interesting meme via Doctorvee:

Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

Birth date: May 20

Events:

• 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
• 1896 – The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier falls on the crowd resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.
• 1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.

Births:

• 1806 – John Stuart Mill, English philosopher (d. 1873)
• 1970 – Louis Theroux, British television presenter

Death:

• 1996 – Jon Pertwee, British actor (b. 1919)

(And if you don’t understand, here’s a clue. 8 days to go!)

As alluded to earlier, I was in London at the weekend. Long train journey down and a long train journey back.

Delivered hundreds and hundreds of leaflets, visited Blackheath (right) and had a great time at a quiz night run by Lewisham LibDems. The weather was “changeable” – sunny one minute, spitting with rain the next. Sadly it was raining a little which stopped me taking a photo with my phone of a van I saw covered with grocers apostrophe’s: it was advertising work on “Lock’s, door’s, kitchen’s” etc.

On Sunday afternoon, while finishing a delivery round, I got caught in such a torrential downpour that I got completely soaked through. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet – not fully clothed anyway. With no spare trousers or shoes – and my trainers in particular were drenched – I decided to spend an extra night in London to let my things dry out, as preferable to spending 8 hours travelling in dampness. Monday was a write-off, then, with most of the day spent on a crammed service north.

Despite consuming a fair amount of alcohol over the weekend, I did feel virtuous from all the leafleting and walking, so, as it’s a bank holiday in Edinburgh on Monday, I’m flying back down to the smoke tomorrow to dispense more leaflets.