Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

Here’s another observation test for you. Does the pub pictured below sell food?

Not sure? Have a look at a different view of the same pub.

Still not sure? How about now?

One final picture in case you’re still dithering:

Here’s a little test of your observation skills: how much would you expect to pay for one of the bottles of tea-tree oil pictured?

If you said £3.09, you’re wrong. If you said £4.09, I can see that you’ve worked out this is a trick question, but you’re also wrong.

Don’t worry, I got it wrong too. I bought one of the bottles of tea-tree oil from that shelf and I didn’t realise until I left the shop that I’d been charged £7.79 for it.

In my previous post, I set out the problems I had with Nationwide’s internet banking. In brief: it took me six months to get to the point where I could actually log in and do something with my own money. What I tried to do then was to transfer money into the HSBC account I share with my husband, so that we could pay our (Nationwide) mortgage. As my previous post makes clear, this proved impossible because Nationwide required me to use a card reader to carry out the transfer, and the card reader didn’t work.

Just over a year ago, I took what I thought was my first step towards more ethical banking: I opened a Nationwide current account. Before I opened the account, I made sure to ask about the internet banking. Did it work? Was it straightforward? Easy online banking was one of the few things I liked about my old HSBC account, and I wanted to be sure Nationwide would offer the same thing. I was assured that Nationwide’s internet banking was very easy to use and naively, I believed it.

My post on blood pressure testing is about visual feedback, so before I uploaded it I tried to find a picture to illustrate what I was saying.

When you get your blood pressure taken at the doctor’s, what do you see? Something like this?

In reality, probably not. When I think of blood pressure readings I imagine numbers on a display, but my actual experience of blood pressure measurement is different.

Not once, in all my years of visiting the doctor, have I seen the front of a blood pressure monitor in the surgery. It’s always positioned so that the doctor can see the numbers, but I can’t.

Today I discovered that the front wheel of my bike had been stolen. It must have been an easy crime to carry out; the bike was parked at Oxford train station with just the frame locked to the stand. It probably only took the thief a few minutes to get the wheel off.

I was tempted not to bother reporting it to the police because I know very well that I won’t get the wheel back, but I decided I didn’t want this crime, however small, to be invisible.

I popped into the Witney branch of Robert Dyas today. Yeah, maybe I am a glutton for punishment. I found the can of WD40 I was looking for within minutes, so this isn’t another thrilling tale about my epic search for something-or-other.

In my post about the Travelodge website I got angry about a webform that wouldn’t let me press the Submit button. This post is about what can go wrong after you press Submit.

Today I needed to contact Nokia about a problem with the battery on my mobile phone. I didn’t fancy getting lost in an automatic phone system, so I decided to send an email to kick things off. So I clicked the link saying “Contact Nokia via email”.

The women gathering in the hotel lobby were obviously going to a really good party. There were two cowgirls and several pirates plus a bee, a princess, Snow White and Tinkerbell. But even Alice in Wonderland couldn’t tear my attention away from the usability-themed drama unfolding outside.