Its been a while since this descended into Watchdog style consumer advice, but if you're on O2 don't order the white iPhone 4S. After 3 months of waiting we gave up and got them from Apple. I thought if I went on about it on twitter enough we might get some free stuff but no. Presumably because hardly anybody follows me on there, and most of those that do are suspiciously attractive Russians who don't have a great deal to say but are very interested in the outpourings of other people. Fnar.
It is pretty life changing having a phone that works, but I'm still a bit miffed that I had to forfeit all my games of Words with Friends because my phone couldn't run it (paulgoodwin if anyone wants to take me on). Also, my old phone won't talk to computers any more and I still haven't figured out how to get plants vs zombies off it. Ah well I'd finished it anyway. My latest game of choice is Cut the Rope but it's a bit easy. In case you can't tell, the new year hasn't been that eventful so far. Thankfully we exhausted all the series of Vampire Diaries and 30 Rock on demand so in principle things could get done.
One of the other benefits of having a phone that works is that I can be writing this while I'm on the train to Balham to watch Annie play at The Bedford. It's been a long while since I've been there - I played a fair few times a few years back, and always felt like I&nbps;went down well, but eventually they noticed that I don't sound like Paulo Nutini and wouldn't let me play any more. I think maybe the Nutini-only restriction has been relaxed again (albeit maybe not as far as me) but I haven't got the heart to try now. I'm looking forward to the gig though, it's a really cool place and their policy of two songs in each half of a show is great for keeping an audience who are there to see a particular act in the room.
To be honest I'm not really up for playing at all at the moment. A so-bad-all-you-can-do-is-laugh review of Trinkets and Offcuts got me down a bit. It didn't exactly dent my confidence but it did hammer home again how hard it is to get anyone to give anything a proper go if there's anything difficult about it, especially now that the songs themselves seem so far down the list of what most people seem to judge music on (after whether it's been on One Tree Hill, how many retweets it has, whether it's been on a deodorant advert, the shoes that the guitarist is wearing in the promo pictures, if it has a banjo in it). Not that I deserve to get a proper go over anyone else. But if attention spans keep going like this in a few years all the music we get force fed will consist of 30 second versions of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in reverb soaked harmony/with a Pet Shop Boys style backing/sung by a cooky girl with lots of handclaps. Actually, that last one has already been in some kind of advert hasn't it? As entertaining as it is, I'm not convinced the internet has been a positive influence on the world overall.