I was toying with the idea of writing some indignant letter complaining that they’d promised me a cheque but it never turned up. OK, so not strictly true, but it’s not like I’d cashed the old cheque and they could check their systems and cancel it so I didn’t stiff them out of any more money (other than, perhaps, the cost of doing the above which, quite frankly, they deserve).

Happily (or sadly depending on your point of view) the cheque resurfaced among some other paper that had got muddled up among the stuff to be shredded (the mice go through a lot of shredded paper so I shred everything possible). It’s now been cashed and, hopefully, this is the last dealing that I will ever have with nPower. In the words of Smeagol: We hates them!

Now in the grand scheme of things £25 may not seem like a lot but you’ve got to remember that I only had nPower providing energy for a month and the house was empty for that month. The gas bill was pence. The electric bill was nothing and they’re giving me money. nPower have actually paid me to use them… and I still wont ever touch them with a barge pole again.

The only downside to this resolution is that I don’t get to write my indignant letter of outrage demanding an apology and recompense, although I may still write once the cheque has come through and demand I get written confirmation that nPower will never contact my mobile number or home number ever again unless they’re going to give me more money.

Today that changed. IG Index, who to my mind do the bast spread betting platform bar none¹ released their iPhone app. IG have had a mobile site for their spread betting platform for ages now, even one that’s formatted for the iPhone, but I’ve always found it a bit clunky and the charts (which are a must for the type of trading I do) were buggy and unreliable. The new iPhone app, on the other hand, is very slick, execution appears to be reasonably fast that the orders appear to be executed at the price you hit the button, not the price it’s at when the server finally gets the instruction. The last thing you want is a slow GPRS connection turning your big fat profit into a loss.

A quick check of the forex markets (24 hour, move fast, good for a quick test of anything with small stakes and tights stops and limits) and I spotted EUR/USD was on the up, rallying from a small retracement. 50p a point, stop at 20 points (maximum loss would be £20), limit at 2 points (maximum gain £1) and every intention of bailing the instant I struck a profit or the instant it looked like the trade was going south. A punt, yes, but as punts go not a massively risky one, not over these time scales with the entry and exit points. Worst case I loose connection, the app crashes, or some other disaster, the trade goes wrong and I lose a tenner. Best case the same as before but I get a quid. Actual result: I netted 35p.

The reason why I said the app ‘appears’ to execute at the price you hit the button is because at 40p I hit ‘sell’. Nothing happened. A quick look at the UI and I spotted the close trade button. I hit that instead (35p), a dialogue comes up telling me it’s closing the trade (20p) and the little spinney ‘loading’ icon (15p) followed by a confirmation (10p). Total time to close the trade was about 5 seconds (which is a VERY long time in forex) but a quick check of my account showed I was 35p up.

So there you have it, the iPhone is no longer a drain on the resources. Armed with my new app, a bit of luck and a following wind I might even cover the cost of 3 iPhones (original, 3G and iPhone 4), the GPS dock, the headphones, the mic attactchment, the docks, the stipend to o2 to use their mobile network paid every month since November 2007, the 99p or whatever it is I’ve paid for each and every song I’ve downloaded from the ITMS (and there’s been a lot) and the frightening number of apps I’ve bought (and lets not forget the $15 or so spent on books thus far). Well, maybe not cover, but put a large dent in… well a dent… OK, well 24p more and I can get myself a cheap game for free

¹ Yes, I know the ProSpreads platform can do lots of fun advanced thingies but I defy anyone who doesn’t have a couple of years knowledge to even understand how it’s used. The only thing all the extra bells, knobs and whistles did for me was allow me to blow my £50,000 trial account in half the time it would have otherwise.

I should probably point out that Spread Betting is a leveraged product and the value of your investment can far exceed your original stake. It’s a wonderful way of throwing away money, even if you do know what you’re doing and probably not recommended for those who don’t know what they’re doing. That said, if you really, really want to give it a go let me know because if you sign up for an IG Index account recommended by me I get a bottle of champagne or something. You might also get some money in your account, I can’t remember, all I know for sure is I get goodies if you then go and make a few trades.

Now, before we start casting aspersions on The Zozos choice of gift I should point out something. While the picture above is a picture of a lone, orange gummy bear it’s not the one The Zozo bought me. It’s actually one I bought. The Zozos gummy bear isn’t in that picture. Bear with me here.

So by zooming out a little we start to see something next to the gummy bear I bought. If you bear in mind that my gummy bear is a bog standard orange Haribo Gummy Bear you might start to question what’s next to it.

Yes, The Zozo bought me the Mother Of All Gummy Bears. This beast is 24cm long, weighs 5lbs (2.3Kg), contains 12,500 calories, is 1,400 times larger than the normal gummy bear and is the largest gummy bear you can buy in the UK (if not the world). Eating it involves a chopping board; a large, sharp knife; and quite a few sittings. I’ve even carved a chunk into a bits and placed them in a container to take into work… and I’ve not even finished the legs off yet. I’m in gummy heaven

Today I received a call from them. At first I thought maybe I’d left something there, or maybe I’d been charged for the wrong item, but no, turns out they want to give me a rather nice A3 printer as a prize (the most expensive prize in the draw no less) which I think is rather sporting of them. I don’t think I’ve won anything like that before