BBC NEWS | Technology | Europe clears mobiles on aircraft
Viviane Reding, the EU telecoms commissioner, has warned operators to keep the cost of calls made on planes at a reasonable level. “If consumers receive shock phone bills, the service will not take-off.”
Joke not intended I assume – after all it’s a quote from an EU Commissioner.
Where do you find six pound coins to pay for parking?
This is the standard charge to leave a car for a day in the Lake District. So where do you find this much change in the middle of nowhere?
Even in Ambleside, where there are dozens of shops, there are signs that warn, No change given for the car park.” So dear Ambleside trader, how am I supposed to park to become a customer in your shop?
I bought sandwiches – offered a £10 note and asked for pound coins for the Pay and Display machine. “Sorry sir, we need our change.”
What’s the matter with you people. Go to the bank. Get a stash of change. Smile. Write a new sign – Change given here for the Car Park. Offer a service and watch the footfall increase. More footfall – more sales. It’s not rocket science. And anyway I only want to park a car – not a rocket.
I’m in the Lake District this week with Joan. Staying at our favourite place, The Skelwith Bridge Hotel. It’s at the mouth of Great Langdale – the home of the Langdale Pikes, Dungeon Ghyll, Chapel Stile and Elterwater.
Elterwater
My young grandson has gone home with him mum and dad today. He is such an inquisitive boy – there’s something he wants to explore at every turn. I felt it my grandfatherly duty to introduce him to the National Railway Museum whilst he was here in York.
Surely every small boy has a right to be shown the giant iron machines that used to haul our trains around the country in the days of steam. One day he may become a Friend of the National Railway Museum like his grandad!
I am in Acton, training curators at the London Transport Museum to run Digital Storytelling Workshops. It involves taking them through a workshop to tell their own stories using personal narrative and photos from their own albums.
Today was a storycircle. That’s how they identify their story. At this stage it doesn’t have to be linked to transport but a surprising number are. A journey across the US by Greyhound, a car in search of purple fluffy dice (yes really), the driving instructors wart (honest) – all have transport links. There’s a story about blue shoes and another about a fondly remembered grandmother whose failing memory still held on to the many verses of the Lady of Shalott.
In the next few days these stories will take on a life of their own as they are turned into short TV films using digital technology – digital stories. In the process everyone will start to understand the skills that inspire others to tell their stories in the context of the transport museum.
Inspire is the key word. Technical skills are simple to master; inspiration is vital if people who may have written nothing more than a wishlist since leaving school are to gain the confidence forge their story into a script.
I love this work – and the stories I’m told in the workshops. What story would you tell? No more that 300 words.
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digital storytelling, travel, media