Subscribers

For a company that I don’t have a contract with, nor intend to, TalkTalk have really annoyed me today.

It seems as though the flat we are going to move into has TalkTalk as its phone supplier. This in itself isn’t bad, but we don’t want it.

We intended to move with BT, taking our number with us. However when the current tenants cancel TalkTalk it seems as though the line just goes dead.

BT won’t automatically re-connect a number. There is a simple reason for this and that’s the £122.50 reconnection fee that muggins has to pay. Despite it being a TalkTalk line even TalkTalk will charge a £30 reconnection fee and force an 18 month contract on you.

We always intended to go to Sky for our Broadband and phone, but planned for it to be a BT landline underneath it all. But we’ve found out that Sky will charge a £39 reconnection fee (yesterday it was £25, but you can’t have everything). This gives us exactly what we want for £80 less than BT.

In actuality we can get

• A phone line reconnection
• Sky+ box
• Sky installation
• A months line rental

For about £115. And although it sounds a lot of money it is still £7.50 than BT just reconnecting the line.

I’m a typical Gym user. I occasionally think I’m overweight, go to the gym, remember how nice pies are and then stop going.

I’m trying to stop that cycle by making the gym part of my normal working day. I normally now get there each working day and have been marking down how I’m doing on a little spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet was on paper but I’ve moved it to Google Docs as it allows me to update it from anywhere and also show a public version on the Internet. I’ve placed a link on the right (under ‘Healthy Lifestyle’).

Also on the sheet is how well I’m eating. I’m not really dieting, but I am trying to keep track of it. I’m quite happy with my lunches now of lettuce, cucumber slices, carrot sticks and celery with low fat salad dip. On top of that I normally have baked crisps an apple and a go-ahead bar. Health-a-rific.