I’ve just got in from tonight’s fun but rather under populated By The Gods reunion doodah in London.

A notable omission was Alec, who, it seems, has picked up a slight bug during his many travels and hence felt too unwell to come.

Well, he did miss a goth couple who made chain-mail clothing, the woman of which wore a black lace top with a leather bodace, which she kept taking off to show people how it was made.

It was nice to see the gang again. Lunch was in TGI Friday’s with just four of us. A rather smaller number than usual but it still took about half an hour to get a table!

Seeing as I had arrived in London at about 11:45 and wasn’t meant to meet up with people at Charing Cross Police Station ’til 2pm, I decided to wander around annoying phone shop people asking the same question of all of them and then seeing what answer I got. The question I asked was “Do you know when Orange are releasing the Handsprint Treo 600?” It sounds a simple question, but the variety of answers shows how little most phone shop people know and how much they even read their own literature…

Orange Shop, Neal Street: “Erm, I think you can only get it at our business shops which are open during the week.” The nice woman then took out one of the glossy booklets which show current phones and showed me a number of pages with images of the Handspring on them. “I’ll just make sure and check with the manager.” Which she promptly did and confirmed with him that only business shops stock them but that they were available now and that I should be able to call up Orange and buy one that way.

Orange Shop, TCR end of Oxford Street: “The last I was told, they’re released on Wednesday.”

Orange Shop, Marble Arch end of Oxford Street: “I don’t know. I only heard of it today, so I guess it’ll be available in a month or so.”

Various other shops either looked at me as though I’d asked them what the phone number of God was or merely said that they didn’t know when it was going to be released, which is fair enough.

I did find it interesting the range of answers from people in Orange Shops, however. At least in two of them the people knew something about the phone, even if one of them was wrong about its availability. What did surprise me was that one of them obviously hadn’t even thumbed through this month’s glossy manual which was sitting next to his cash register to find out what the current in-phones from his company were.

Well, I’m sure you recollect that on Saturday I posted a an entry stating that I’d been told that Orange were releasing the Treo 600 soon. Well, yesterday I decided to try to get information about the release from a few other mobile phone shops.

First I tried the other Orange Shop in Oxford, their reply after much whispering amoungst themselves was “late November.” I then tried Phones4U at which I got a blank expression and no answer at all. The Link admitted to me that they had no idea what I was talking about. So, there you go, they all probably have no more idea about the release date than I do! Or maybe less.. At least I’ve read the original press release of 17th September which states “October” and I have seen the Orange web site which states “Coming soon to PM” (Pay Monthly) and I also know that the cost will be in the region of £200-£300.

Anyway, now some social news. Tonight I saw Pirates of the Carribean with the bunch of now 4th year undergrads who have befriended me. Let’s say that if you can forget about history and the fact that pirating was at its height about 100 years before this seems to be set (from the ships and costume) and the use of the “word” “O.K.” close to the beginning of the film then it’s rollocking good swashbucking spoof fun. Pleasantly surprising for a Disney feature, especially based upon a theme park ride.

Now, off to bed. Night all.

Well, I discovered today that Orange are going to start selling the Handspring Treo 600 PDA/Phone on Monday. Me want toy! Me want toy! 😉

It’s about time I replaced my aging Palm Pilot Pro with something a little more up to date. I’ve always thought that combining the PDA with a phone was a good idea, especially if it was more a PDA with phone functionality rather than the other way around.

The other thing is that I saw the new Dido album (I won’t call it a CD as it has copy protection which violates teh Compact CD standard) in Sainsbury’s today below the magic price of £10. No album is worth more than this. Anyway, the album is DULL with a capital snooze. It sounds as if the muse has left her, so it’s a whole load of songs with extremely simple repetative melodies and not very clever lyrics. I think the record company was breathing down her neck to get a follow up album to “No Angel” out and this is the result. Try again!