Phil's Scrapbook - It rambles along without an end

[Tessa Poe]

So, it's quarter past one in the morning and I find myself sitting at my laptop knowing I should probably get myself to bed while not feeling tired at all. So I figured if I spent a while just typing away I might end up feeling like I could sleep and that's why we're here.

Annoying I've no idea what I'm going to type about though. I spent most of yesterday evening and today pretty much switching my head off in various ways, which is something I'm quite good at. Honest, we tested it with science and everything. Round about this time last year I flew over to Florida with a couple of friends for three weeks to see Discovery's last launch... of course I didn't get to see that because of the many, many delays that that particular mission had but the trip was still a damn good one. I'm on a tangent again aren't I? To get back onto the science I promised, one evening, while bored in the hotel, we were flipping through the brochures and fliers we'd picked up and we found a magical place called 'Wonder Works'.

For those of you who haven’t been, it's an odd place, and sort of tacky, but still really good fun if you don't think about it too much. It’s built to look like the White House, but upside down. Yep, as if someone picked the White House up, streets around it and all, and turned it upside down. It’s full of sciencey things for kids like earthquake simulators, probability exercises and so on with some added silliness like a baseball pitching simulator and the thing I’m actually going to talk about. It’s a brain wave reader. They strap these sensors to your temples and then tell you that you’ve got to stay as calm as possible. You then sit opposite someone across a table with a tube between them that’s got a little ball in it. At each end of the tube are these jets of air, the calmer you stay, the harder the air blows. First person to have the ball arrive at their end of the tube loses. I won, and afterwards one of my friends said "I was just thinking, is this man even awake!?" Because while everyone else had some sort of pattern of jagged lines across the screen mine stayed pretty much at the lowest level it could and didn't move much at all.

There was a point to this... ohhh yes, switching my head off. See usually my mind runs at a mile a minute, to use a terribly clichéd phrase, and half the time they're not pleasant thoughts either. But we don't need to go into those because that's not the point of this and it's usually a little uncomfortable for me to go on about it. Anyway, moving swiftly on, one of the ways of coping with those particular issues is to just stop thinking entirely. I guess it's a little like meditating, sort of and it's definitely one of the reasons I still smoke after 14 or so years of doing so. You see smoking and switching my head off are tied together for me, it's like a five minute break where I can just go off by myself with a legitimate excuse, five minutes where I don't have to deal with anything at all, whether it's people at work or my own messes or someone calling me with whatever that latest drama they've got going on... it all just goes away for those five minutes. Then, once I come back, everything's nice and calm again and I can sort out whatever needs sorting out. That's not to say that I've spent the last 48 hours sitting doing nothing aside from smoking, because that would be a little too lazy, even for me.

I have no idea what I sound like right now. Meh, the title did say this scrapbook would be a ramble.

Well it seems to be getting on for 2am and I’m starting to feel like I could sleep, hurray for this idea working. Night all, sorry for the slight oddity of this post.

[Tessa Poe]

This is just a To-Do List for Miza, nothing interesting here. So in no particular order:

1) Rewrite Tessa's concept and appearance for her CS

2) Add tables to her CS for lores/skills

3) Finish writing up slave girl PC for Tuwa

4) Finish Fortune Telling HD entry

5) Sort out 3 Flashbacks for Tessa

6) Actually get Gnosis request finished and resubmit said Gnosis request

7) Find an actual real live model for Tessa, rather than the pic I've got at the moment.

That might be it for the minute, at least I won't these ones now.

[Tessa Poe]

So, in the spirit of my to-do list above I'm going to be making this post all about the slave I'm genning up for Tuwa. Her name's going to be Jumaymah, which literally translates to "Female Companion" so it's pretty (at least the way I pronounce it is) and it sort of fits, both of which are good.

Next we've got pics, and thankfully I was able to find the perfect model really early on while trying to think of ideas for her.

I really will have to sort out the size of them at some point, mostly just sticking them up here now so I don't forget them.

Moving on to more general things about her now, and this all rough planning. I'll need to make sure that some of it will actually work and such like.

Jumaymah stands at a graceful, toned 5"6, her pretty face beneath her blond bob usually looking a little vacant, her bright blue eyes staring off into the middle distance as if she's distracted or lost in thought. That is, unless she's with her Mistress, Tuwa, and then there's only one focus of her attention and that's her. She tends to be very sensitive to her Mistress's moods and will often act quietly in the background to help her with whatever she needs, never expecting praise for it.

This is mostly because Jumaymah's very happy with her life and her role in the world. She knows who she is and what she has to do, and that's to serve Tuwa however she's required to. She quite literally lives to her. She knows she's something of a rarity within Ahnatep with her pale skin and blonde hair, and she knows her Mistress likes her that way so she takes greats pains to preserve both. When on errands she'll often be seen shielding herself from the sun beneath a parasol. She also keeps herself in shape, spending up to an hour each day exercising once her duties have been fulfilled.

She's typically dressed in reds or ambers, the colours of her mistress' house, (I'm fairly sure these are the house colours, don't have time to check the Lore at the moment since I'm off to the pub soon) and she takes great care over her appearance as she knows it reflects on her mistress. Everything she possesses she's received from her Mistress, the pretty silk dress for formal occaisions, the simpler work clothes, the hair brush chased with silver (a gift after... something I'll work out with Tuwa later).

As a person she's earnest and faithful, not accepting anything but the best from herself when it comes to her duties. She actually does live to please Tuwa and whatever's asked of her she'll do without complaint, no matter what. It's very much the case that she'd literally die for her Mistress.

She's not the squeamish sort, nor is she one to over think things. If her mistress says something is true then it is. Her life begins and ends with Tuwa and that security leads to her being able to remain calm in most situations.

There is a marked difference between her attitude in public and private. In public she's quiet, reserved, the picture of a perfect slave. In private she tends to be more chatty and relaxed, so long as it doesn't bother her Mistress. It's one of the reasons she's so careful to take note of Tuwa's moods.

She tends to a small garden (possibly a balcony affair, somewhere that you can give the plants some shade every so often so they don't just dry out) and grows a selection of herbs and spices, small tea bushes and flowers.

Lores:
Duties of an Eypharian Slave
Customs of the Eypharian Nobility

Skills: (Changed as she's now a Konti)

Medicine 10
Gardening 10
Herbalism 10
Calligraphy 15
Intelligence 5
Singing 5
Sewing 5

On the more OoC side of things... I'm actually really looking forwards to playing her. She's going to start off fairly settled in her life, knowing what her fate is and entirely comfortable with it all. But what if something were to happen to make her question that, or just upset it all? Or, since she's going to be serving Tuwa and moving in her world of high politics, maybe that'll bring something fun to the table. Plus there's the relationship between Tuwa and Juhmaymah. From the little we've talked about it (really have to have a longer talk about it at some point) that should be fun to play with.

Note: Seeing her as a combination of secretary, dresser, cleaner and body servant, performing any other duties as required.

It's odd in a way, I mean with Tessa I'm never entirely sure what she's going to do at any given time, sometimes it's literally one line of someone's post that sets the tone for her actions in the next one. With Juhmaymah though she seems much more settled, much more certain and secure in herself. Should be a nice contrast between the two of them hopefully.

Edit:

So it was suggested that I make her a Konti, and I'm really starting to like the idea. Probably born away from the isle, possibly born into slavery. That way she can still be happy with her life as is, seeing as how she doesn't know anything different, and it adds in something interesting if she ever does find out about her heritage and people. Well possibly. It also means that she's particularly valuable as a slave and as such a fitting one for someone of Tuwa's standing, even if she is a member of the sort of disgraced North Winds.

I've no idea what to do for her 'gift' though. I'll have to think on that.

More Editting:

So I don't forget the idea I had for a gift:

(11:09:49) Tessa_Poe: Since I was planning on taking medicine rather than fortune telling as the bonus skill, the gift would a contact based health reader, for want of a better way to put it at the moment
(11:10:18) Tessa_Poe: As in if she touches people she gets a sense of if they're feeling pain anywhere, or if they're eyesight's poor, or if they're ill
(11:11:28) Tessa_Poe: Realising what a particular illness is would be a matter of her actually having some prior knowledge of it though, I mean if it's not something she's come across then all she'd know is "They're ill, it seems to making it hard for them to breathe" But she'd have no idea what to do to help fix it
(11:15:00) Tessa_Poe: Heh I'm trying for something different to everyone else so far
(11:15:45) Tessa_Poe: Plus, it might be particularly unpleasant touching people if you always knew what was wrong with them when you did... especially if it worked because she experienced the same sensations the person she's touching is

If I can use the above idea as a gift it's going to make her really phobic about touching people, unless she's gotten used to repeated contact with someone.

[Tessa Poe]

This'll probably be a short one, it's just an idea I like really.

Since I have (well almost have) two characters now I was thinking about something Neil Gaiman said when I saw him speak at the Edinburgh Festival.

First though... I have such a man crush on Neil Gaiman, I practically squeed in my seat when he walked out onto the stage.

Back to what he was talking about. Someone in the audience asked him if he ever sort of talks to his characters, and he said that it depended on the character. There were some he wrote and once their story was finished that was it, they disappeared. Others he'd be able to have full conversations with while others still essentially had their own lives in his imagination. This last group was one that he'd check in on from time to time, just to see what they were up to.

Now this, this is an idea I love, and I've been thinking about how it applies to Tessa and Jumaymah. With Tessa... she's definitely her own person. Half the time I don't feel like I'm writing her at all, she just does what she does, with no real input from me. I sit down, I read the prior post and then I start typing and its her in the driver's seat. They're her words, her style of writing, her decisions and reactions to whatever's going on, whether that's all centred around a single thing someone else has said to her or just general musing it always feels like her. So should the worst ever happen and I end up unable to get back onto Mizahar I get the feeling that Tessa will be a character that I check in with now and then, just to see what's she's been doing since I last did so.

Ju though, is a bit different. I've not entirely got her fleshed out yet and I get the feeling she's trying to tell me things already, but I can't quite make out what she's saying. It's almost more like she'll be telling me what she's been up to, what she hopes to do and so on rather than just doing it, if that makes sense. Or, in a strange way, it's almost like receiving letters from her, full of news and titbits and thoughts.

This difference in perspective on them is something I'm growing to like more and more, because it's almost like it'll be a different experience writing for/with them. Now I just have to hope that that comes across in the posts I put up here.

[Oracle]

First though... I have such a man crush on Neil Gaiman, I practically squeed in my seat when he walked out onto the stage.

Ever seen Stardust?

Back to what he was talking about. Someone in the audience asked him if he ever sort of talks to his characters, and he said that it depended on the character. There were some he wrote and once their story was finished that was it, they disappeared. Others he'd be able to have full conversations with while others still essentially had their own lives in his imagination. This last group was one that he'd check in on from time to time, just to see what they were up to.

God I know how this is...people tend to look at me crazy if I say this, but talking it out with your characters is a healthy way to develop them.

Half the time I don't feel like I'm writing her at all, she just does what she does, with no real input from me. I sit down, I read the prior post and then I start typing and its her in the driver's seat. They're her words, her style of writing, her decisions and reactions to whatever's going on, whether that's all centred around a single thing someone else has said to her or just general musing it always feels like her.

Let her do the driving! Some people work well with well planned out structure and plots and plans, while others just look and go. Typing out what ever comes to their mind. Editing later is always an option. Once you let your character say everything they are going to say you can come back to being you and revise it. Or at least I do that. If I try and think of how I want a thread to end or I actively think about what Fela would do in a situation, I simply cannot write. I have to wait till I'm...well she...is in a mood to write. She is just a moody as I am when it comes to writing, and it has to be on her terms.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a split personality?

Well enough about me, you such a creative individual and I just love reading everything you write. It's a breath of fresh air for me to see how well you stay IC and showcase all the quirks of who you have created. I love the fact that Tessa has flaws, that you acknowledge and let her work though. I hate seeing perfect characters, they are no fun at all to read.

Maybe that's why I've always liked a good bad guy? All my favorite characters for the most part, whether is be in movies or books, have been bad guys or just really dark twisted people.

I guess what I really want to say is...


I <3 you!



Liz

[Tessa Poe]

Ever seen Stardust?

I have I have And read the book too. Loved them both, though the film's ending appeals to my sappier side so I prefer it in some ways. It's really not all that often that I say that. Come to think of it Claire Danes as Yvaine would make an excellent Konti model.

God I know how this is...people tend to look at me crazy if I say this, but talking it out with your characters is a healthy way to develop them.

Ahhh most people think I’m a little crazy, the whole singing to myself on the train/bus probably doesn’t help with that, so what’s one more thing for me to get odd looks for?

Let her do the driving! Some people work well with well planned out structure and plots and plans, while others just look and go. Typing out what ever comes to their mind. Editing later is always an option. Once you let your character say everything they are going to say you can come back to being you and revise it. Or at least I do that. If I try and think of how I want a thread to end or I actively think about what Fela would do in a situation, I simply cannot write. I have to wait till I'm...well she...is in a mood to write. She is just a moody as I am when it comes to writing, and it has to be on her terms. Sometimes I wonder if I have a split personality?

I’ve had a similar worry before But if I do have one it seems very benign I know what you mean though, trying to force a post for Tessa just means I end up spending hours staring at the screen slowly going mad.

*snips the rest to spare myself the blushes*

Awwww thanks Liz, I’m glad you’re enjoying what I’m putting up here, we’ll have to see if we can manage a follow up thread in Riverfall, if you like, since Fela’s adorable

[Quixotic]

There is only one word to describe my current mood and that's....

GLEEEEEEE!

(no, not the TV series that I've never watched but people are obsessed with telling me all about, the emotion.)

That is all

[Taln]

*give a big hugs and a congrats*

[Tessa Poe]

Because Lists Are Fun

This is entirely stolen from Fela/Oracle's scrapbook but I'm sure she won't mind, and if she does I'll find some way to make it up to her. Ooo wait, to pre-empt things:

There, while she's distracted by that, on with this list of things you might want to, or might not want to know about me. I'm probably just going to type these as I think of them in a sort of conciousness streaming exercise so there won't be a particular order to them. So, here're 30 things you probably didn't want to know about me.

1. I've been called "The geekiest guy I know" by more than one person, not because of my dedication to a particular branch of geekiness but because of the broad range of geeky hobbies that I have.
2. I am very, very OCD about my hands.
3. As such I tend to get what I call 'lizard skin' between my knuckles, it's not pleasant.
4. I spend quite a lot of my life avoiding the culture of celebrity with some success.
5. I am a very picky eater, something made worse by my gluten intollerance.
6. It's easy to irritate me, but very hard to make me actually angry.
7. If I'm irritated it never lasts long since I tend to be very laid back about most things.
8. I take pleasure in being excessively polite to people who do irritate me, mostly because it seems to annoy them.
9. I'm not actually phobic about anything.
10. I'm always willing to try anything at least once, aside from fish. I hate the taste of cooked fish, for some reason raw fish is really tasty though. At least when in it's in sushi.
11. I have the most annoying voice mail message in the world because I hate people leaving me voice mails. It seems to work in reducing the number that get left for me.
12. I'm an ex-pat kid, I grew up in Saudi Arabia. It was hot, and dusty, and did I mention it was hot?
13. I still miss my piercings.
14. I find writing directly onto a computer to be much more difficult than hand writing things. I still pretty much hand write most things first and then type them up afterwards. It all seems to flow that much more easily that way.
15. I have an odd obsession with Last Stands. I mean I know in reality they're utterly horrendous affairs, but still there's something about them that draws me to them.
16. I get really odd periods when I need to watch/read something sappy. Most recently I spent an evening watching Wimbeldon and Love Actually back to back. That certainly scratched that itch.
17. My favourite colour is purple.
18. I've read all four Twilight books. In my defence I read them to try and understand their appel.
19. I still don't understand the appeal of them.
20. I love the Fast and the Furious films. They're awful, ridiculous affairs with no artistic merit whatsover but I love them all the same.
21. I have that english accent, you know, the posh one. I guess it's more of a lack of accent than anything else.
22. My favourite film... I don't have one. There are a lot of films I adore, so in no particular order: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Scanner Darkly, All About Eve, Iron Man, The Thirst, Dead Snow, The Wrestler, Withnail and I, Ghost in the Shell, Natural Born Killers, Flash Gordon... that'll do for now.
23. I cried and cried and cried when I read the Fox Cub Bold. I've never read an Animals of Farthing Wood book since.
24. I bite my nails, not just my nails, but the skin around them too. I've stripped the skin back to the top finger joint before. No I've no idea what that joint's called. Also yes, yes it bled quite a lot.
25. I snore, but only when I'm lying on my stomach.
26. I'm practically a professional painter/decorator.
27. I love Aqua. Yes, even the Barbie Girl song.
28. I'm firmly of the opinion that couches/sofas are one of humanity's greatest inventions.
29. I have a deep and abiding hatred for the sound of people whispering. It literally makes me shudder when I hear it.
30. I can drink a pint of cider in three seconds or less. It used to be a party piece of mine.

So that's all for now, better get back to work really. If you read the entirety of the list you get a cupcake.

[Tessa Poe]

Fair warning everyone, this is going to be a long one from me that’ll wander across a variety of topics.

So last week, on Tuesday to be precise, I was on a training day. I spent the entire day out in the sticks in the function room of a local football club. It was a warm, sunny day that I spent slowly going utterly mad. Don’t get me wrong, the idea behind the training’s a pretty good one, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It’s supposed to be a course designed to help Care Homes behave in a more professional way, to put them on a level footing with hospitals and doctors when they work together in regards to client care. This is something that’s needed, because like it or not a care worker is never going to have the same standing or get the same level of respect as a doctor or a nurse.

Come to think of it I should probably explain what this training’s particularly focused upon. It’s about End of Life Care for people, designed to improve the care they receive as they come towards the inevitable end for all of us. Sometimes that involves just keeping them comfortable, making sure they get the right medication to keep them pain free, sometimes it’s about making sure their wishes are respected despite what others might think or want to do. To be honest, there are a lot of problems for care homes when dealing with health care, or to put it another way, there’s a massive divide between health and social care. As I said before, there’s the respect issue, and if you’re a care worker they’re not going to listen to you. They won’t care about your opinion, even if you’re the one spending upwards of thirty hours a week with a client, that you know what they’re like, what their usual habits and moods are, and sometimes those habits and moods are the only way for you to tell that something is wrong with a person living with dementia is when these habits and moods change. But because you’re ‘just a carer’ that experience and knowledge is more often than not ignored.

I don’t tend to have this problem quite so much personally. I’m in management, I’ve got a pair of degrees, I’ve got a reasonably posh accent that people respond to (like I said on my list I’ve got that English accent, the cute one) and I’m reasonably articulate. Like it or not people respond better to me when I talk to them than they might do to others. But the carers? They’re facing an uphill battle every step of the way, even the paramedics think their word should be taken over that of a carer.

To get back to the point I started out with, you’d think a training course designed to raise professional standards in care homes would be carried out in a reasonably professional way wouldn’t you? Sadly that’s not the case, the entire affair is poorly organised, the people who are supposed to be teaching us don’t know the material and frequently start arguing in front of everyone and it took them three sessions to listen to my suggestion that maybe, just maybe they might consider handing out printouts of their frankly endless amateur power point presentations. They didn’t seem to quite understand that people aren’t going to be able to remember 150+ slides of information, nor will they be able to take notes fast enough to get all the information down given the way they rattle on at the quick pace they set for the training days. The whole thing really is a bit of a shambles, with who knows how much time spent with fairly pointless anecdote sharing and general bitching about problems people are having with the aforementioned doctors, nurses and paramedics while the instructors just nod and make sympathetic noises. No-one ever suggests a solution, no-one ever takes control of the session and I have to spend my time getting more and more annoyed ‘til I want to scream. The most frustrating thing of all is that the system that we’re putting into place based on this training course is a good one. It’s clear, concise, easy to use, well thought out and it will actually raise the quality of client care, it’s been proven to do so when it’s been applied in the past. They just royally suck at getting that across.

It’s sad how often you see that these days, good ideas choked off by poor presentation or a lack of time, or even just a general sense of apathy.

Moving on from that, there was something else that came out of that day. One of the forms introduced during the session was the ‘Geriatric Depression Score’ and there was a particular question that caught my eye that I just couldn’t stop thinking about:

“Do you think it’s wonderful to be alive right now?”

It’s an odd question isn’t it? I mean the context and phrasing suggests it’s a micro type question, as in this second, is life wonderful? But, and I don’t know about anyone else who might be reading this, the answer for that question’s going to change moment to moment for me. I spent the half hour before lunch sitting there in a stiflingly hot room in a really uncomfortable chair. Oh a word about this chair, the posture it forced me into just making my lower back ache. So I was sat there, stuck listening to some woman from Rackheath whining on and on and on, all the while craving a ciggie. I mean really craving, the kind of craving where it feels like there are little creatures nibbling at the inside of my lungs. So it’ll come as no surprise that my answer to that question at that particular moment in time would have along the lines of “FUCK NO! I’ve found one of my own personal hells! Now fuck off and leave me alone!”

I really wasn’t a happy bunny.

But, if you spooled time on half an hour and asked me again? By now I’m standing outside, leaning against a pleasantly warm wall without a soul with me, ciggie hanging from between my lips as I take a nice, long drag with my eyes shut and enjoying the pretty light show the sun makes through my eyelids… my answer would be almost exactly the opposite. Though I might well have politely asked you to stop bothering me. Funny what a difference half an hour can make isn’t it?

So, for me at least the question doesn’t really work in the micro, unless you’re planning on asking it at fairly regular intervals, and if you did that I know I’d probably end up saying something like “Yes, apart from you asking me that bloody question over and over again” or “No! Now stop asking me that stupid bloody question!” Except of course none of the answers I’ve suggested so far would have been valid. There’s no space on the form for comments, no room for discussion, it’s simply twenty questions with a delete as appropriate YES/NO after each one. Again this is just me personally, but I don’t think I can define my mood and general appreciation for life in such black and white terms. Ugh, I don’t quite want to do this, it’s not something I like to draw attention to because… it’s no-one else’s business but mine. However, I need to make a point and I’m reasonably sure no-one’s going to read this far so let’s just get it done and move on. Like most people it seems I have my issues, self esteem or my lack of it is one of them, bouts of depression, insomnia, and a particularly addictive personality. Not going into details on that, let’s just say boarding school teaches you some very bad habits when you’re friends with a lot of rich kids with more money than sense. So, the point of all that is a demonstration that at least for me the question doesn’t work on a more macro scale either.

It’s the use of the word ‘wonderful’ that really confuses me though. If we take it on the micro again it’s rare that life’s ever ‘wonderful’. Which is the way it should be, wonderful’s not a word that should be use lightly. Wonderful for me is a word that means something’s literally full of wonder, or a moment’s practically perfect. Like when I stood in the middle of the Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Centre, turning on the spot and thinking “You know, sometimes the human race gets things right doesn’t it?” or when I climbed the Great Wall on New Year’s Day looking out over Mongolia with a stinking hangover that the endorphins blew away in under a minute. Those moments were wonderful, chatting with friends in the pub isn’t. Going to work isn’t and nor is holding yourself together while you’re so bloody miserable that you feel like you can’t even get out of bed. Your everyday life isn’t supposed to be wonderful, I mean it can, but what does that make the highlights of your life? If everything is wonderful the concept becomes devalued in some ways. The same way that being in one of your personal hells does for an entire day. By the end I’d gotten used to dull ache in my back, it was actually strange when I stood up and felt it ease, I sort of missed it. You can grow accustomed to anything given enough time, whether it’s nice or nasty. I guess that’s why I’ve never given the idea of heaven or hell much credit or particularly cared for them. Sure it might be fantastic/terrible at first, but you’ve got all eternity stretching out in front of you and there’s only so much fantastic/terrible that you can experience before it becomes mundane; before it becomes the status quo.

Change happens, it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad and sometimes it seems like it’s one and then turns into the other. Without change we end up standing in one place stagnating; without life’s ups and downs we end up empty. It’s how we cope with our triumphs and our adversities born out of the change that give us our definition, and yes I say we need to be able to cope with our triumphs. We have to be able to do so gracefully, without becoming full of ourselves or arrogant about them, else we end up becoming tossers, and that’s not something I ever want to be. You know the type, the people who think their very existence brightens the world, the people who are so full of themselves they’re only aware of the rest of the world in a very limited sense, and even then only when it directly affects them.

Bloody hell this has been one long ramble hasn’t it? There’s more to this, but I think I’ll leave it for another time. Though I haven’t ended on a particularly positive note have I? I’m knackered though and running out of energy to think straight so what I’ll have to do is make a little promise. I promise my next post in here will be full of shiny happy things and unicorns that vomit rainbows and produce magical cupcakes on demand.*

*Please note, unicorns that vomit rainbows and produce magical cupcakes on demand may not feature in the next scrapbook post. This does not affect your statutory rights. For more information please dial 0 on your telephone keypad and wait for eternity. Yes, I’m afraid our hold tone will be awful. Full terms and conditions are not available on request and they never will be, so stop asking. Thank you for your co-operation.