Wednesday, January 4/2017

The day of the newspapers. NY Times account now active. And then there's the Guardian Weekly. Back in September there was a widely advertised (well, popped up frequently on the ipad anyway) special offering a  six week trial subscription to the GW for varying amounts in the neighbourhood of €6, depending on the country at which the ad was aimed. Well under the cover price of £2.90/€5.50. (Yes, those are not close to being equivalent amounts). The real sweetener, though, was the bonus of a £25 gift card for John Lewis stores. Much correspondence followed in which various confused but extremely polite and quite willing employees eventually confirmed that the subscription could be paid with a Canadian credit card and delivered to a Cypriot address and that the gift card could be used either in the John Lewis department stores or with an online order from JL. The agreed starting date was with the December 2-8 issue. Credit card duly charged, confirmation received, and everything in place - except for the actual physical receipt of said newspaper and gift card as December 2, December 8, Christmas. new Year's Day came and went. And so I am, with the usual reluctance of the procrastinator, finally drafting a letter to the GW to explain the situation when Kiki arrives at the door with a plastic wrapped newspaper. Pleased, and at this point surprised to see it. Unfortunately the newspaper is indeed the one for December 2-8 and the news pretty elderly at this point. Entirely possible that the Cypriot postal service has played some - perhaps the major - part in the delay, but still not entirely satisfactory. And there is the small matter of the gift card - primary reason for the whole enterprise - to resolve. And back to enjoying the very current NY Times.