Do you still use your local library?

I just re-discovered ours and its incredible. Especially for the kids, it gets expensive to keep their stock of books fresh.

They can borrow up to 9 books each for a month and it costs nothing. Its a great way to explore new subjects, my son is suddenly fascinated with the Second World War so he’s now got a bunch of books that I couldn’t have gone out and bought for him.

Now I probably shouldn’t knock book buying as Waterstone’s have supported us greatly running several raffles.

Are my musings here going to have any impact on their bottom line? I don’t think so. In fact as a family we still buy many books as the one thing a library can’t do is compete with tactile covers and the smell of fresh crisp pages in the morning.

What I wanted to talk about is a new type of raffle that Waterstone’s are helping us trial. Internally we call them Play For Another (any better ideas would be truly welcome!). These raffles run in exactly the same way as our normal raffles except the winner elects who the benefactor will be.

In Waterstone’s case, they are raffling a New School Library. There are 1750 tickets at £2.00 each, with each ticket granting the holder £2 off at Waterstone’s.

The winner of this raffle tells us which school they would like Waterstone’s to give the prize to. Simple.I really hope Schools get behind this one and encourage parents to take part. It represents a great new way to undertake fund raising and because every player gets a discount voucher equal or greater than the ticket cost, everyone wins!

We’re keen to have a number of these types of raffles running, an IT suite, new Gym equipment, Music, heck we’re even trying to persuade Ocado to run a raffle for a kitchen suite with great fresh food deliveries for a year, to help with the new Food Curriculum! Fingers crossed.

If you have any other ideas or know a company that we should be talking to please post a comment here.

Not all iPhones were created equally

Now of course part of the beauty of the iPhone is the personalisation on screen and wide variety of cases available making all iPhones look different. What was a surprise to me is that iPhone innards are also different. Let me explain:

My treasured iPhone decided to give up on me the other day and following a few frantic calls to O2 and Apple I headed up to London to get a replacement. That was a simple enough process having booked my slot at the Genius Bar earlier (maybe Apple should licence this cool tech to the NHS).

Replacement phone activated and home. Now I love my iPhone, was looking forward to it way before that fantastic keynote introduced it, but it was almost not to be. I live out in the sticks and only Vodafone provide any workable coverage out there, so when it was announced that O2 had secured exclusivity my heart sank. Still bought one though when the time came and by willpower alone I managed to hunt out 1 bar of signal strength – enough to send and receive texts and very occasionally receive a call on loudspeaker (moving the phone ended the call!). 

New iPhone settled into that haloed spot last night and No Signal. A panicked run around the house, a switching off and on of the automatic network settings and still No Signal. Even a comparison down the pub with a friend’s iPhone showed mine with 1 bar and his with 2.

It’s not all bad, being out of contact when at home almost sends shudders down my spine but it wasn’t that long ago that we could exist and communicate with the humble landline, heck even arrange a time to meet with a group of friends and actually make it – all without sending a text.

There’s little linking this post to Raffle.it except to say that one of our first raffles was for an iPhone, run by Stuff Magazine - each ticket not only gave you an entry into the raffle, but also gave you a free copy of the Stuff Magazine, all for just £1.

We’re hoping to replicate this soon and are working on it right now, in the meantime though say hi to the winner - he was very happy and thought it a joke until he received his phone.  

The best feeling is when you get feedback from a winner, the surprise, excitement etc – makes it all worthwhile. 

Superbly Manic

The Levellers, Carling Academy, BrixtonI can’t confess to being a true fan of The Levellers. Although I love their sound I’m not committed enough to know the lyrics and this really was a prerequisite to total immersion in Sunday night’s performance.It was great to see such an incredibly enthusiastic crowd of all ages with great big smiles on their faces whilst they screamed the words with perfect timing and jumped up, down and around in an almost primeval trance. Thank you The Levellers, I still don’t know the words but your songs are playing back to back in my head today.