Back to the 3 store on Kilburn High Road. We bought a sim card (for £1) and a £10 top up voucher on Saturday because our Asda sim needs replacing at the end of the month and 3 has the best pay as you go deal going. With 3-2-1 you pay 3p a minute for phone calls, 2p a text, and 1p a mb for data. As long as it's used at least once in six months, even to send a text, the remaining money on it never expires. Compares pretty favourably with other UK plans, to say nothing of Canadian extortion.
The difficulty is that the sim isn't working - no reception. The first young man we speak to just shrugs his shoulders and says we need a new mobile, but his equally young manager solves the problem by changing the phone's internal settings from 2G to 3G and all is well. It's the mobile we bought in Damascus at the duty free last visit. So, oddly enough, both our phones have Arabic as well as English letters, the other one having been bought on a Qatar flight.