Days 0 & 1: Larrington Towers - Denver, CO

Good day to one and all, and I declare Volume 6 of thee Automatic Diary well and truly open for business.  It is just gone 9pm in a Denver where the weather is almost indistinguishable from back in Blighty.  And they don't even have the excuse of it being a Bank Holibob over here.  First I must excuse in advance any typos as I have been using my iPad a lot recently and the keyboard is somewhat different. Plus I've got the mouse plugged into this thing, and keep forgetting, and keep swearing when the trackpad doesn't work.

Although I have not the excuse of damaged joints this year I still left my motorcar at Fort Larrington for the duration as wrestling The Luggage into the boot of a car is an order of magnitude easier than dragging it through central Londonton.  Thursday's dose of the M25 was not too horrible and the whole business of getting from Fort Larrington to Denver was remarkably smooth.  The journey to Heathrow was unremarkable, save for the muppet in a Vauxhall Insignia who decided the hard shoulder would be a good place to undertake an Italian-registered camper van.  Bag drop and security painless; ignoring the World of Whiskies duty-free shop rather less so.  Only a bit late arriving here in Denver and my cunning plan to shift from a window seat at the back of the bus to an aisle one near the front paid off, in that I only had to queue for a few minutes at US immigration.  And then spent the time saved waiting for The Luggage.  Easy enough to find the Hampton Inn & Suites too, or it was once Emily had woken up to the fact she was no longer in E17.  This post is of necessity quite short as nothing very much has happened yet, but don't forget to keep an eye out for new photos in the albums "Travels 2014" and, later, the various "BM 2014" ones too.  And "Bridges for CrinklyLion" - fear not, Crinkles, my bridge-fu is raring to go.

I haz a Mustang.  It's black 

On "service": So I tried to buy a new phone, to simplificate matter while travelling.  Phones 4U supplied a SIM-free handset, which was so SIM free it wouldn't accept the existence of mine.  Oh, they said, we will exchange it for a new one.  No good, I said, for there is insufficient time between now and my departure from Larrington Towers to permit said phone to arrive in my grubby little paw.  OK, they said, we will e-mail you a prepaid label, that you might send it back to us in exchange for a refund.  You will receive the e-mail within four hours.  This was at ~11:00 Tuesday, thus one might reasonably expect to get the thing by 15:00.  The same day.

No.  No, I didn't.  So I phoned them again at ~14:00 Wednesday and after a certain amount of faffage, determined that a prepaid label would be with me in time for the Six O'Clock News.  And guess what?

The e-mail finally dropped into my Inbox at 18:21.  On Thursday.  When the phone and I were separated by some considerable distance and about six weeks.  I'm advised that BRITAIN's economy is largely based on "the service sector" these days, in which case it is little wonder that it's such a fucking shambles.  Whither "service", Phones 4U, shower of gobbins that ye be?  Needless to say, they will not be figuring large in any plans I might have to join the ranks of the smartphone-owning in future.