My legs ache, my feet still hurt, I have another day of walking ahead and to cap it all it’s raining. Not the water running down your neck kind of rain, just that fine drizzle that blows around instead of just having the decency to fall vertically.

Breakfast first then I decided to take the tube from Holborn to Tower Hill. I certainly couldn’t face walking the full distance again. A single ticket in zone 1 is now £4. On my first London trip it was, I'm sure, just £1. At least I bought Carnet tickets 10 for a tenner and that was it, all of my travel in London paid for. There was a change at one station and I ended up surfacing before realising my error and going back down underground to find the correct line. Getting through the barrier at Tower Hill was fun, as the machine took my ticket the gate snapped open, but I wasn’t quick enough on my tender feet and almost got stuck. The alarm went off but no one stopped me.

By the time I arrived at the Design Museum I was slightly damp to say the least. Thankfully they were open and I purchased my ticket by handing over £8.50. The first floor was filled with architects models and photographs of buildings, some actual, some proposed, including a few designs for Tate Modern that didn’t make the cut. Not all that interesting. The second floor seemed to be closed off. I don’t know if this is usually an exhibition floor, this being my first visit, but I'm sure there must be something there. The third floor had more architects models of futuristic houses as well as some artwork done by someone who did the design for one of the last Olympic games… and that was it. Talk about being completely underwhelmed! After seeing all the great stuff in the shop I thought that the museum part of it was going to be more of the same. Chairs, furniture, gadgets, iPods anything that is well designed and serves it’s purpose, but there was nothing like that. I'm sure I've been to the art galleries in Manchester that have had more ‘design’ items than that. Yes, bitterly disappointed having visited the place twice on consecutive days. I just had another walk around the shop, which was infinitely more interesting, and free, bought my pack of Field Notes memo pads and headed back across the bridge to Tower Hill tube.

On the underground again to Euston Square and a trip to the Wellcome Collection, which I had only passed the other day. I've always had a fascination for medical artefacts like this and admission is free. It is just wall to wall science. A printout of the human genome, that isn’t something that you’ll see every day and certainly isn’t something that I think you could replicate with a bubblejet printer. Guillotine blades, hair and teeth of those long since left us. Amputation saws, shrunken heads, male anti-masturbation devices, chastity belts, artificial limbs, dentists chairs, it’s all just wonderful intriguing stuff and did I mention that it’s free? The café was packed so I just had a little wander, more of a limp really, around the shop and then outside to decide what to do next.

I still had places I wanted to go to, Hyde Park in daylight might be nice and it had stopped raining. In the end I decided to head back to the hotel via M&S for something to eat. Walking was still painful to say the least so back down to Euston Square tube I went. At a ticket window I asked for a single to Tottenham Court Road, the bloke behind the glass said that I just needed to go up the stairs and left and that was Tottenham Court Road… and like an idiot I did just that. I guess it did save me another £4 tube fare. So I ended up walking back to the hotel. By this time I was limping quite badly, so much so that passersby were checking my left leg to see if it looked wooden.

Back in room 721 of the Covent Garden Travelodge I lay, under the duvet, eating my sandwiches, watching afternoon TV and I really noticed how grubby the room was. The ceiling was false, which is fine, but they always seem to be made from the same substance that egg boxes are made out of, that really course cardboard that has just been loosely mashed together. So there’s a brown stain on the ceiling, a light bulb no longer works over the door, the window frames are metal and have fixtures missing, this allows cold air and any outside noise easy passage into the room. There is both a vast air-conditioning unit, which looks as if it was fitted in the seventies, I didn’t try it, and a Dimplex heater, again untested. One wall had a large bubble in the wallpaper, another had scuff marks from a boot, it was certainly a boot as there was also a clear print of it on the wall. I counted 4 electrical outlets that must have been in use at some point but now just had covers on them. The bathroom was in a similar state of disrepair. Caps that should have been covering the heads of screws were missing, fixtures like the toilet roll holder had been broken, replaced with new holes drilled without filling in the old ones. A bath was completely out of the question as there was no plug. Four drill holes in the tiles didn’t seem to perform any purpose and lastly, the one thing that never seems to work in hotel bathrooms, the ceiling extractor fan didn’t work. Or possibly it was so efficient and well made that it was inaudible. A snip at £120 a night for a room with only a single bed.

It doesn’t stop there – the other annoying thing was that the two lifts had indicator numbers for the floors, so that you knew if it was your floor. The LED indicator numbers didn’t work, so twice when the lift doors opened I got out. Thinking that that was my floor. There isn’t even a sign on the wall where the lifts are showing which floor it is. The only way you could tell that you'd hit the ground floor is to look for a tile pattern on the floor instead of carpet.

I had been sending text messages to my niece Zoe, telling her what I was up to. She had sent me one back asking if I'd go to the Apple Store on Regent Street and get her a Magic Mouse. I thought that she was mistaken and that it was called a Mighty Mouse and that there had been rumours of a touch sensitive mouse with no scroll ball. I said that I'd only been in there the other day looking for one myself. Little did I know. You don’t check the internet for a couple of days and look what happens.

Yes, tonight I would have been at the Last Night Of The Poms at the M.E.N. in Manchester but alas it was not to be. Through no fault of my own you understand because the date was cancelled back in July with ‘unforeseen circumstances’ being the reason given.

I had been dying to see Sir Les Patterson and Dame Edna in the flesh and had booked the ticket back in January. In my official capacity as curator of a web-site dedicated to Uncle Les I felt it my duty to attend. Even the ticket price of £53.50 didn’t dissuade me. That is a considerable amount of money in anyones currency for two, possibly three, hours entertainment. It would have been the first appearance by Sir Les on a UK stage in many years.

On a side note: when the cancellation was announced Ticketmaster.co.uk managed to get the ticket out the next day. This was so that they could still charge me the £2 booking fee and leave me with a souvenir ticket that was worthless. £2 for a piece of flimsy card. They did refund the £51.50 but considering that they had my money for six months, that the date was cancelled and that they hadn’t even sent out the ticket, it was robbery.

Last night was the first Last Night Of The Poms so my Google Alerts were firing with multiple links to various reviews. You can read the selected high-lights over at Sir Les Patterson’s web-site. From all accounts, the word isn’t good. The monologues by Sir Les and Dame Edna certainly seem to have been well received but when the band and the huge choir strike up that’s when things take a dive.

From what I've read the musical passages just aren’t that funny, witty or humorous. These musical sections have been performed before and, again from what I've read, most people wanted to forget them.

With the country digging it’s way out of a recession I can’t see that that many people would have paid £50 or more, each, for one night out. And that doesn’t include meals, parking, drinks or a stay in a hotel.

The tour should just have been in theatre sized venues, of which there are at least 4 or 5 around the centre of Manchester, with Laurie Holloway on the piano, a few songs (hence the pianist) and buckets of phlegm and gladdies. Possibly do two nights at each venue, one for Sir Les and the other for Dame Edna (I think I've missed my calling, I should have been a tour manager).

There is a possibility that the tour will return to the UK next year after a stint in Australia during December. Here’s hoping that Sir Les leaves the band behind and plays a show near here.

The town centre has been gridlocked for months. The council has been hard at work hacking down the old traffic lights and pedestrian crossings signals and erecting shiny new ones.

For those gentle readers who live outside the U.K. This is how the old system worked.

You'd approach the road crossing, push the button (usually on a post to your right) and the ‘Wait’ signal would light. Directly across the carriageway there would be a post with lights to control the traffic and also lights to control the pedestrians. Traffic lights would change from green to red and the red stationary man would change to a walking green man. You could safely cross the road. Notice that you are looking up, and over, the passing traffic. Looking across the road in the direction that you want to travel.

The new system is different, naturally. The lights for traffic are the same, but the red and green men, instead of being high and in the direction that you are walking, are on the post with the button and the ‘Wait’ indicator. But now the ‘Wait’ indicator has changed to just a red box that is lit. So you have to be looking to your right and not over the traffic. The problem, that I found this evening, is if there are 4 or 5 people waiting to cross, and you are to the right of the post with the button you can’t see the red man change to green. You are totally at the mercy of the people crossing to give you an indication that all is well. If they’re the kind of people who just cross when they don’t see any vehicles then you could just blindly follow them. Instead of waiting for the correct signal.

So you have to be able to see the red and green men indicators to be sure that you can safely cross. This is only about 4 feet off the ground on a box, on a post. If there are many people waiting to cross, and someone is stood in front of the box then none of you can see the signal except those people really close to it. When the green man lights there is also an audible signal that it is safe to cross. If you’re hard of hearing you would still need to be able to see that the visual indicator has changed before attempting to cross.

Surely whoever designed these things tested them out. As far as I'm concern these new pedestrian crossing are a huge backward step.

So Apple have taken steps to limit app reviews to just the people who have downloaded or purchased it, according to Matt Gemmell.

I, for one, hope that this will filter out to the movie reviews (or film reviews, as they are called here in the UK). How many times have you seen one star reviews of good films that start with, ‘Welcome to rip off Britain’, which are just a tirade against the purchase price and not about the film? If you don’t want to pay £6.99 for a film then don’t buy from the iTunes store. When do you ever see someone storming down the baked bean aisle in Sainsbury’s saying that you can buy them cheaper in Tesco. You don’t.

Lets hope that this restraint filters out to other online stores like Amazon. As I said last November the reviews on certain items can become absurd especially on pre-release items like video games and music.

I received a letter from Pipex in the post today.

This letter is in response to the registered letter that I sent to them on the 3rd of July. Apart from my name and the date of my letter it is just a standard reply letter. I haven’t even bothered to read it all, it does run to one and a half sides of A4, but it is just waffle saying how I would have to prove that any fault with my, then, internet connection was due to Pipex.

It just goes to show that customer care is not high on their list of priorities, if at all. Remember they managed to send two payment reminder letters to me every month between March and August after I had left them for O2. If they want something, they shoot letters out at high-speed, if you want anything from them be prepared to wait 83 days.

After all the trouble of last Tuesday I phoned Pipex on Friday to check that all was well with the payment of £24.99. I was told that the finance department still hadn’t ‘okayed’ the money. I asked that I have the confirmation of the payment in writing and was told that this would be noted against my account. To be honest I don’t hold out any hope of receiving this confirmation as it’s been almost a week and I've heard nothing from Pipex. They’re really quick to send out 2 ‘pay up or we’ll cut you off’ letters per month for 6 months, but slow to send out letters that an ex-customer requests.

On Friday I received a letter from S C Gray Solicitors Limited (now they are quick at sending letters out) saying that I need to pay £99.96 by 09/09/2008. They must be working for ScotCall as Commercial Credit Services have passed on my details. The letter was sent out on 27th August, the day after I had paid £24.99 to Pipex.

This morning I received a very red letter from ScotCall Debt Collecting Services with a heading of DOORSTEP COLLECTION NOTICE – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY. This was sent on the 28th August and basically says that I should pay £99.96 within 7 days or else they’ll send the boys ‘round. Great, 2 letters from everyone else but Pipex.

I keep thinking that this is the end but until I receive a letter from Pipex themselves confirming the fact then I won’t believe it.

Last Friday lunchtime Commercial Credit Services phoned me four times in the space of an hour. Saturday lunchtime twice. This morning I tried to phone them but got no reply.

This evening they phoned again, they’re nothing if not persistent, and I missed the call. They phoned again and I answered, a machine delivered an automated message and hung-up. Furious by now, I phoned them.

I gave the chap on the end of the phone my details and he said that I owed Tiscali £99.96. I explained that I had phoned Pipex at the beginning of the month and they assured me that £99.96 was being credited to my account to wipe out the debit. He asked if I received written confirmation, I was told by the Pipex person that that wasn’t possible but that they could send an email instead… which never arrived. We discussed the situation and he said it could possibly be because I hadn’t made the last payment, so late payment fees had accrued over time resulting in the £99.96. Because a sum of £23.99 could balloon over 6 months to £99.96, I don’t think so. Anyway, thinking about it now, Pipex sent an email to me only last month saying that they had finally disconnected me… again, and that I owed £99.96 is payments. He suggested that I pay part of the payment as a good will gesture, which I refused as I didn’t want to pay and then spend the next six months trying to get it back. I said that I would call Pipex again to try to sort it out. But he said that he would have to instruct solicitors to reclaim the debt, send debt collectors to my house and then summon me to court.

So I phoned customer support Pipex. I gave my security details and explained the situation. I was told that they couldn’t figure out when I was disconnected from Pipex and so couldn’t calculate how much I owed. I would have to phone technical support to get them to log the date that I was disconnected into the system. So I phoned technical support and told them the date that I was disconnected from Pipex. They said that their records didn’t go back that far and that I should contact another department at Pipex by dialling the same number and selecting option 1 then 2. So I phoned someone else at Pipex and explained the situation again. They said that I needed to make a payment, which I think was only £24.99, that was outstanding and to clear my account. This was a payment for April even though I switched to O2 at the beginning of March. By this time I was past caring and give my credit card details. I was on the phone for ages and was even put on hold twice while he tried to sort things out. He gave the the authorisation code for the transaction and another reference number. I'm sure he said that Commercial Credit Services would be contacted but when I asked if I had to phone them with the reference number he said yes.

So I phoned Commercial Credit Services, again, and said that I had just paid Pipex and that I had been told that the account was now clear. The woman asked how much I had paid, I said that I wasn’t sure but a value less than £99.96, she asked who I had spoken to. I said that I didn’t know. She said that she couldn’t take my word for it and had to wait for Pipex to make contact.

I still can’t believe that it has taken this long and I don’t believe for a minute that this is all over.

A great way to start the weekend.

This morning I received a letter in the post from Commercial Credit Services on behalf of ‘the creditor’ Tiscali UK LTD saying that I ‘have chosen to ignore repeated reminders from our client in respect of the above debt’ for £99.96. And that ‘the case has been placed with us for immediate collection via Dudley County Court’. ‘Take note that a CLAIM will be issued on 20/08/2008 for recovery of £180.62’. ‘Judgement/Extract Decree will, if necessary, be obtained and enforced. This could seriously affect future credit or mortgage applications’.

Serious stuff. Especially for someone like myself whose only debts are car payments, until February next year, and a mortgage. And also considering that I don’t owe them any money and never have and that I have made every effort to try and sort this sorry mess out.

I was honestly thinking that I'd need to talk to my solicitor or at the very least, someone at the local Citizens Advice Bureau.

I printed off the last two email discussions that I had with them back on the 16th and 19th of July. Pipex Customer Services were responding to a reply I had sent after receiving another payment reminder. They said, and quite rightly, that I had to give them my account and security details for them to look into the matter. They wanted to know :–

How you cancelled your Pipex service.
Evidence of the request (if written).
Copy of your bill from other provider
The date and time of your request.
(If Verbal) the name of the agent you spoke to.
Any other details you feel are relevant to the claim.

I responded with the information they required, including two activation emails that I had received from my current ISP O2. I wasn’t nasty, I just wanted to finally get this sorted.

So this morning I made another phone call to Pipex saying that I've received yet another letter saying that I owe them money. The chap at Pipex said that they have indeed made good their threat to cut my ADSL connection. He spent a few minutes reading the log against my account and obviously the mass of correspondence that has been exchanged over the last four months. Possibly even including the registered letter that I sent on the 3rd of July. Possibly not.

He said that he would credit my account with the £99.96 therefore wiping out the debt. I told him that I had, thankfully, cancelled my direct debit back in March but he said that it was just dealing with the Pipex account. I asked if he could confirm this in writing but he said that he could only send a confirmation email. I thanked him for his help and hung up the phone. That email I still haven’t received.

I don’t think for a minute that it’s that simple. When I phoned back in April I was told the same thing, “We’re sorry, there’s been a mix-up with our system, I’ll fix it.” It didn’t happen then, I don’t think for a minute that it’s happened now.

Is it really any wonder that customers have no confidence in big businesses. Something that should have been fixed with one phone call has now gone on for months. Their time and resources have been wasted, my time and patience has been completely drained.

Another month, another email from Pipex Internet Credit Control saying that they’ll cut me off in 6 days if they have not received payment.

I'm not phoning them this time, I'm just going to wait and see what happens. No doubt they have already dispatched a letter containing a similar message. Then a few days later another email saying that non-payment will affect my ability to get credit in the future.

Strange that it’s exactly 2 months to the day that I've been with O2. Pipex disconnected my internet connection weeks before that.

Remember :– If you are having any trouble with Pipex… “Run far and run fast!”

They just keep phoning. Each and every one of them with a really thick Indian accent but with a short and snappy English name. This was Kim and she wanted to sell me a mobile phone package. She didn’t get very far and won’t be making her quota for this month.

A quick search of the intertubes via the googles did reveal that they do this all the time, if you’re listed with the Telephone Preference Service or not. Nothing you can do.

If only I had the creativity to do this :–