Life after price comparison websites and contract surfing

Ds2 spent the afternoon painting Warhammer, while I wrestled with price comparison websites trying to fix us a better phone/broadband and electricity/gas contract.

Three hours later, square-eyed and comparisoned-out, I think I might have sorted it.

Over the years with TalkTalk we have had numerous bizarre phone conversations in that loud monosyllabic voice that we English adopt when we can't understand someone's accent. Even the simple task of asking TalkTalk staff the most basic of questions (NO-I-DONT-WANT-TO-UPGRADE-I-WANT-TO-KNOW-WHY-YOU'VE-STOPPED-MY-INTERNET-CONNECTION) felt like Livingstone trying to swap underpants for frog poison with some obscure tribe who have never encountered people from the outside world. (YOU-GIVE-ME-INTERNET-CONNECTION-I-GIVE-YOU-MARMITE. EH? MARMITE. M-A-R-M-I-T-E. YOU'LL LOVE IT.)

I thought I'd never say it, (I don't like to feel that I'm a failure at multicultural communication),  but I am looking forward to a provider with a UK-based call centre.

So, this post, apart from documenting the ordinari-nari-ness of our day, is also a sort-of prior warning.

If I don't blog for a while, it may mean that my contract-swapping has all gone belly up.

Most likely it will mean that the guy at  the UK call centre with the lovely Glaswegian accent couldn't get the wee woman on the phone to understand a word, and that I'm without internet access. [btw it is common knowledge that it's useless anyone north of Milton Keynes trying to communicate with us over-anglicised southerners.]

[Apart from that, this was our day:
 
The usual chores, then 'tick-box' stuff from their folders, chemistry reading, touch-typing, blah blah. Then to the interesting stuff: dd made chocolate cookies, while ds1 made microwaved steamed pudding (that was his breakfast) and did some drumming and guitar. Then, some time in the garden, and ds1 off to IGCSE geography, picking up dd's friends on route. Dd and friends playing for the rest of the day. Then dinner and ds2 to scouts...etc etc.]

Browsing blogs, I saw a lovely post A Moment in our World  for making quick pencil cases.  The original instructions for making the pencil roll are here on the My Poppet blog.

We have rather a lot of random bits of material and I need to find some genuine uses for it, apart from its current employment as loft insulation.