Friday Dec 11 - Tesco Announce iPhone Prices, Brockington Xmas Fair, Birthday Meal and New Harry Potter DVD

At last a reasonable iPhone tariff I may finally treat myself! Tesco today announced their iPhone offering and on the face of it the 12mth deal looks pretty reasonable if I can save up enough for the upfront cost. I can't decide on whether to go for the 16GB or 32GB. I've managed OK with an 8GB card in my N95 and N82 so 16GB should be more than enough, however it seems to be the rule that the more space you've got the more you use so perhaps 32GB would be best. On the downside I know that the camera's pretty hopeless, no flash, but that's really the only problem. I can live without multitasking. I was tempted by the new Nokia X6 however Electricpig (a tech review site) have just given it a fairly poor review and more importantly Nokia have, for patently stupid reasons unknown , failed to include a digital compass in the specification. Without a DG it's impossible to use most augmented reality applications and these are the apps with the greatest potential. I want a phone that I can use as a virtual guide book when |I'm somewhere I’m unfamiliar with. Something, which, not only tells me where I am, but also what I'm looking at; and then how to get from there to where ever else I want to go. The lack of a DG means that despite GPS, the camera and the Internet the phone can't overlay information because it doesn't know in which direction it is pointing. Why oh why do Nokia keep doing this, they always seem to fail to include one essential element in very phone they produce!

Enough about phones Mysickbones you’re obsessed, waiting now for Nat to get home and get changed. When Deb's home with Han we're off to Nat's school's X-mas fair and then into town for Han's birthday meal more on these later.

The fair was great, we arrived there shortly after 4pm, I got five books for a Pound, Han got her nails and face painted and we discovered a stall with home made cakes and sausages which represented a small farm type shop in Endeby. We're off there later in the month to stock up for X-mas. Their cheesecake (something I've never been a huge fan off) was absolutely delicious and I'm intending to make sure that this is one of the things we will buy. We saw Donna, Jonathan, Sian and Josh there and Donna gave Deb one of the bottles of wine she's won in the tombolla, apparently she always wins.
We stayed for about 45 minutes then headed to the car to get to town in time for Han's birthday meal. Deb had booked a table for 4 at 5:30 at Zucchero on Charles Street in Leicester City center. It's one of those all you can eat restaurants and features food from around the world. The selection was very good and the quality also. Unfortunately there seemed to be no Mexican dishes on offer that night so I missed out on the chilli which was supposed to be superb. There was a sushi table and for the first time I was able to try a selection, pretty tasteless over all but not bad when you dip them in the spicy sauces. The broccoli cheese was outstanding. Typically Han and Nat headed straight for the buffet and returned with plates piled high. We tried to explain that it was best to get little helpings and to go back frequently. The staffs, without exception, were exceptionally pleasant and very helpful; on arrival Han mentioned it was her birthday and one of the staff brought her a free fruit cocktail a few moments later. There were only two faults, the drinks were too expensive (£3.50 for a can of beer) and the all in adult price was a little on the high side at £14+ per head.

 When we arrived 5:20 the restaurant wasn’t yet open so we walked to the town hall to see the Christmas decorations. Nat was not feeling very well and was in a bit of bad mood. I was overly harsh with him and claimed he was ruining Han’s birthday. This resulted in tears, sorry Nat, but he seemed to perk up when he saw all the food and shortly thereafter everything was forgotten.

 We left the restaurant at about 7:10 and drove home. To finish off the night we watched the new Harry Potter DVD and I drank Donna’s wine. Can’t decide whether |I liked the film or not, like the last two there’s so much left out because the books are so long that it’s sometimes hard to recognise the story. It’s like the last film in a way as soon as it ended I couldn’t really remember much of what had happened. It seems I’m not alone in feeling this way as a team mate at work told me that she’d only managed to watch the first half of the film before becoming bored and switching it off.