Wake up this morning to be greeted by Ernie who has some news for me, but declines to tell me what it is by email; it's a test to see if I can remember where I have hidden my login credentials. It's a test which, after a sticky pause, I pass with flying colours to learn that my modest investment of £1,000 has brought me winnings of £25. It is not clear from the records in front of me for how long I have held this investment, beyond it being at least two years. So a tax free return of less than 1%, which is probably better than that presently offered by that former mutual known as Halifax on their golden saver accounts.
I move onto technology, where I want to record a new-to-me use of that fine technology known as a smart phone. Fine because of all the fine science and technology which has been poured into its construction. This particular smart phone came with an auxiliary camera on the screen side which meant that one could take a picture of oneself while looking in the view finder, as it were. Presumably that is the whole point of the auxiliary camera. This one was being used as a mirror so that the young man in question could make an exhaustive examination of his very modest collection of zits. I suppose that if you invent something wonderful, you just have to put up with the fact that some of the uses to which it will be put are not particularly edifying.
And so to Tooting where we did have a more edifying discussion, about what was involved in selling 10 million such devices in the course of a week, this being said to be the sales of a new toy from Apple. First point was that the 10 million devices came from four factories in China, so 2.5 million apiece. Next point, how much space do 2.5 million phones in their boxes occupy, with one of the discussants able to brief us on the size of the box, say 15 by 5 by 2cm. Which makes it Beelzebub's number to the cubic metre, that is to say 6,666. Say 5,000 in round numbers, which gives us 500 cubic meters of smart phones to the factory, maybe 10 shipping containers of the 40 feet long variety. Are they valuable enough to air freight or do they take the chance of the Somalis getting their paws on all this loot?
We then wandered off into what would have to be the shut down date for the software on the devices. Next point, they had to be turned on to install an update remotely, so they could not be on the pallet at the same time. At which point the discussion floated off into the Chenin Blanc offered by Wetherspoons.
But we did not float so far that I failed to spot the purse on the seat on the subsequent train to Chessington. A purse which had either been discarded by a thief or which had been sitting there for some hours. But it was not empty, containing, inter alia, a bank card and some loose change. I don't like handing such a thing in, on the assumption that it would take the owner a long time to get it back, even if they thought of contacting lost property. But, armed with the name of an obviously young person, tried Facebook, which has been useful in that way in the past, but without joy on this occasion and I was eventually reduced to phoning the bank, which I had been reluctant to do in the first place because I thought that they would most likely stop the card whatever I might tell them by way of reassurance. But the bank did agree, after a long pause, to take my number. They then phoned the contact number that they had for the card, which got the mother of the owner of the purse, who contacted her daughter, who contacted me, maybe 20 minutes after I had phoned the bank. So the system worked. And it even worked to the extent of my handing the purse over the following day, underneath the bird-limed statue of a former monarch which graces the exit to Tooting Broadway tube station.
On the way home from which handover, I was able to observe the way that most of the houses in the row of town semis opposite the large bus stop just past the back door to Wetherspoons had movement above their front bays. Whoever designed them had cut corners on the bressemers. Just about visible on careful inspection of streetview near 51.428672, -0.169046.
Reference 1: for Beelzebub see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02388c.htm.
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