Apples, Arms and a Really Good Film

If you ever want to find out how important your phone has become in your life, go to work without one for a couple of days. It is quite silly to discover how many things you use it for outside of things like making phone calls.

This was my world for most of this week as the kerfuffle levels around my dodgy phone raised themselves a few notches this week. Last week I bored you with the tale of my iPhone 4S not wanting to do the Wi-Fi thing, and the good fortune of it being insured. My new one turned up the very next day, and having spent a whole day at work without a mobile I was happy to get home and set my new one up.

My new handset sprang to life, embraced my Wi-Fi like a long-lost friend and we were off. The handset had arrived with iOS 6 on it, and to enable me to restore the back up from my old phone, which was iOS7, I had to upgrade. This as you may know takes an age, and when it finished it appeared that I had restored my phone right back to the broken state it was in previously.

I spent the rest of the evening on a web chat session with some Apple chap who was stumped and having tried everything apart from setting the thing on fire agreed that I needed another new handset. As the hour was late he arranged for someone to call me the next morning to arrange collection and delivery.  They did as promised, and so I had to work from home on Wednesday as they could not give any sort of time for the chap to come.

Having been literally sat at my front door from 8.30, and having accepted deliveries of all sorts of things for other members of the family by 11am there was no sign. At 11.05 my Mum and Dad appeared at the back window of our house asking me to go out back with them to look at some ivy chopping they had been doing on our back wall (they live next door remember). I did so, and of course when I returned indoors three minutes later the DHL man had been to our front door ninja style, popped his card through and scarpered sharpish. How I laughed!

Not being able to work from home the following day due to meetings in the office I had courier stress all day waiting to hear from Emily or Louise to say he’d been and the exchange had been successful. I arrived home once again keen to get my mobile life back, and thankfully it worked. I was not silly enough to restore my back up again, I just set it up as a new phone.

So as I said, a right kerfuffle.

The rest of the week was calmer thankfully, and on Friday evening I had booked us tickets to see Saving Mr. Banks at the cinema. As I drove home I got a text from Louise saying that Emily had fallen at work. Upon getting home I discovered that she had really hurt her arm, and based upon her level of pain and lack of mobility we decided that we had to take her to A&E to get it X-Rayed. This did not please Emily as she was desperate to see the film.

Anyway, we had superb service, and were in and out within an hour. Thankfully they said the arm was not broken, but very badly bruised with a lot of soft tissue damage. She hasn’t really been able to move it since, and she’s in a lot of pain. It is not nice seeing her suffer of course.

She did manage to drag it along with her on our second attempt to get to see the film on Saturday and we all loved it. I demonstrated my Disney geekness by spotting a monologue from Walt that is pretty much lifted from the One Man’s Dream film, as he describes his paper round. Anyone else spot that?

Anyway, it was delightful, and if by any chance you haven’t seen it yet, you must. I would imagine that most folks will enjoy the film, but if you happen to be a fan of WDW and Disney then it is an added bonus. Both the lead actors are superb, and it got me hoping that someone now has the idea to make a film of Walt’s life. Having read about his life there is a lot to tell, and of course Tom Hanks needs to play him at the appropriate age. I know many Hollywood producers read this blog so it will be in production next week I’m sure.

A book update is about to follow, so for those already bored with hearing about it, you can stop reading now and I’ll see you next week!

I had set myself a target of 50,000 words by the end of November, and I am delighted to report that I got there this week. There is still a way to go in the telling of the story, but with that milestone passed I’m too far along now not to finish it. You have been warned. I also thought of and added another plot element/twist which also pleased me, and will hopefully help to keep the interest of all seven people who eventually read it.

I’m at the tricky stage of it now I think, having to build it to a crescendo style ending (steady, it’s not that sort of book!) with enough pace to make it interesting, but balanced with enough detail to make it understandable. I shall approach it as I have the rest of the exercise, by winging it entirely.

Anyway, I have to make the tea now, as I suspect does Stephen King.

Till the next time…..