Just to let you know, I was not suggesting that Mobile Phone Exchange was a scam, merely stating that it’s hard to tell these days which online companies are legitimate or not.

In any case, I’ve now sent in my old Nokia N95 to Mobile Phone Exchange, and I’ll be able to report on my progress here as to whether the company is legitimate or not.

Obviously, I would not even consider sending my old phone in if I was uncertain, but as I was considering sending it in for recycling anyway, I thought now would be as good a time as any to test things out directly myself.

It’s a sport that lends itself to the casual fan. It’s a beautiful sport, often a mesmerising sport: anyone can appreciate Roger Federer’s pinpoint precision and poetic skill.

But there is no Federer here. And although that makes it less exciting in a way, I’m hoping it will still be exciting here, with these two players.

As I’m writing, the Wimbledon final is underway, and I’m hoping it’s going to be a thrilling game. It’s a little bit strange not to have Roger Federer in it: he limped out against Thomas Berdych earlier in the competition – and it will be interesting to see if it will be a passing of the torch moment, like when Federer trumped Sampras all those years ago.

There’s something thoroughly entertaining about Nadal. He plays with such intensity, such fire; a steely determination to never give up, never allow a single point to slip away. He literally plays every point as if he were against match point. And yet, he has such endurance that you have to think the longer the game goes, the more it favours him.

Berdych is a relative unknown. Although he if he wins, he will be the first person to ever win the title having gone through the top three players in the world to do so.

There are some famous faces in the crowd, too, and you can see why: it’s a fantastic event. The sun is shining, there are strawberries and cream and offer, and tennis is a game that you don’t have to follow to appreciate.

He interviewed Spanish ace Xabi Alonso about why England failed so miserably at the World Cup, who said, very eloquently, that the 11 best does not make the best 11.

Yes, we can litter our team with world-beaters and Champions League heroes, Premiership champions and footballers of the year; but ultimately, it is not a team.

To make a team, you design it, and design it with specific players and their specific skills in mind. You do not get the 11 best players and force them into a position and a system that they’re not used to. You don’t force them to play in these unfamiliar ways, because, as we have seen, they will play like strangers.

England have played like strangers for so long that it has become the norm – to get better, to make it into a further stage of the World Cup than the last 16, we need to break the mould.

When Germany were thrashing England the other day, the commentator said: how many of these German players would you swap for the England team? He was talking, of course, about the supposed brilliance of our individual players.

But Germany are a brilliant team. They play with the fearlessness of youth, and they play like they are enjoying themselves. And they are now in the semi-finals after destroying Argentina in a similar fashion to the way they dismantled England.

It is not about the individuals: it is about how they co-exist, how they play together, how they string passes and think and work as a unit out on the field.

I just hope that England learn their lesson, and learn it quickly.

When I first came out of university, there was barely a job to go around. In the arts field, the creative field, there were even less than many of the other areas; and it made it relatively impossible to find the sort of work I wanted to find.

Now, with my post-graduate course drawing to a close, I’m having to look around at jobs that I can apply for when it finishes. And I had better start now I suppose. After all, it’s better to get the applications in as early as possible than to wait for a few weeks.

Doing the extra course was partly because of that. And, partly, it was so I could separate myself a little more from the next batch of hopefuls graduating and flooding the market.

And while it strikes me that the job market is a lot better this summer than it was last year, it’s still, inevitably, going to be hard to get a job.

So this time I’m approaching it with a different mindset. This time I’m happy to do anything, at least at first. Mostly anything, anyway. Even if it means using the old elbow grease and doing basic office cleaning work.

At least until something more my preferred thing comes along. That way, I can be earning something and not just sitting around doing nothing, and I can at least maintain something of a social life.

Who knows – maybe something ideal will spring up just in time for the course to finish?

And yet, there are a number of old mobile phones lying about the house at the moment. To see them piled up with the dirty laundry or with dusty, forgotten CD’s is a bit of a shame.

It’s quite easy to recycle them. In many cases, they send you a package, which you slip the phone into and post back to them. And then you get paid. It’s really as simple as that.

I don’t expect mine is the only house with old mobiles left lying around, so it begs the question – why? Why don’t people take more care to sell or dispose of their old or broken phones in a green and reliable manner?

We live in a society that is obsessed with recycling: there are about four different bins on my road for whatever rubbish might accumulate over the course of a week or two. Food rubbish, plastic, cardboard – the list goes on.

And people have taken to the multi-bin approach very well. People recycle their waste and their drink bottles enthusiastically.

So what is it about phones? When I bought my new phone, it even came with a recyclable plastic bag to put my old model in, so there really is no excuse.

Perhaps it’s a matter of publicity. It’s a bit of a struggle to find any stories about recycling services in the news; I suppose it’s entirely reliant on people being proactive and finding out about what’s on offer.

Is it really a surprise to see them go out? They played so terribly bad in the group stages, and failed to come in first place – which inevitably means playing tough opposition in the first knockout game. This time it was Germany. Last time it was Portugal.

The simple fact is, England seems to be a team of individuals – great individuals, there is no doubt about that; they are world-beaters and Champions League standouts, most of them – but they are not a team.

Argentina are a team. Brazil are a team; passing in a blur of brilliant speed, and attacking, moving forwards rather than sitting back, ponderous and slow.

England looked a pedestrian side today, and, really, even if they had got through, they would probably get picked apart by Argentina, who play like the team they are, and not like strangers.

I think there is a lot to be learned from Spain, here. Fabregas doesn’t make the Spanish starting 11 for a reason: it doesn’t suit the team. He may be a fantastic player, but it is not about amassing an army of fantastic players, it is about putting together a team.

And until England remembers that, or an England manager is brave enough to remember that, we will still be stuck playing pedestrian football.

And now, since summer is here, and my holiday is only a few weeks away, I’ve decided to do a bit of window shopping online.

Well — is it “window” shopping when there are no windows involved? Well, in any case, I have been doing some online shopping and not actually buying anything – yet.

I quite like making mental notes and lists of things that look nice, or that I’m sure I’d like, and then weighing up their pros and cons over a few days, before ultimately deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on the purchase.

Most of the time it happens with books. Books are fantastic for holidays, and I’ll certainly be needing some – but I don’t want to buy something just for the sake of it: I want to be sure I’m going to enjoy it. Or as sure as it’s possible to be, because most of the time you can’t really be sure about such things.

One book I’m almost certainly going to get is STORIES, a compilation of short stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. It has received rave reviews, and sounds brilliant. And perfect to dip in and out of, while abroad.

But there are other, less well known places to shop online, not necessarily for books, but certainly for interesting and often unusual goods. Shiny Shack is particularly interesting, especially when you don’t necessarily know what it is you’re after, or you’re looking to buy unusual gift ideas.

Or you can do the more traditional Kelkoo search: search for a product you know, and let it find the best price for you.

That’s one of the things that’s so tempting about it — that it will be right in the middle of American football season, and not only would we get to watch an NFL game – and probably a very good game at that; we would get to choose the area we go to, after all – but we would get to see a college game as well.

I’ve not seen a college game before, not in the flesh, and the atmosphere and the spirit of them is fantastic from what I can see.

The trouble is, it is difficult to afford it. Especially after paying out so much for my sub-editing course over recent weeks. So I’ve been looking at independent financial advisers to help me put together a plan to combat my penniless state.

It will have to be a big move to afford it, either way. I’ve got my trusty current account and that’s it – I’ve never had to get a loan before, discounting my student one back in the day. And I don’t like the idea of increasing my debt.

I’ve been looking at a number of banking websites and browsing as much financial news as I can, to keep my eye on trends and deals that might help out, but ultimately I think it’ll have to be a loan and the debt that entails – or no trip.

Decisions, decisions…

It’s well worth checking out, if you haven’t already. In fact, it has already won the Newberry medal — the US equivalent to the Carnegie. This medal makes him the first person in history to win both for the same book.

And I can’t think of a better book to have won it. The Graveyard Book is about a boy whose family is murdered in the dead of night, but he – then a toddler – wandered out of the house and up a hill into a graveyard.

There, he is raised by ghosts and a vampire, living with and being taught by the dead. It’s a remarkable book, based on and inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

But one of the fantastic things about these awards is that the shortlist often consists of a number of authors that I haven’t heard of. While there are some that I’ve seen, some that I’ve read, it’s a joy to discover altogether new books by altogether new authors – most of which are wonderful.

There is a video up here where you can see the winner being read out and hear his acceptance speech.

Some of what he says on cutting library funds is particularly poignant. Cutting library money, he says, might be easy, but it is also “stealing from the future” to help remedy today.

The phone was released in a plethora of countries today, and there has been the inevitable buzz of interest and frenzied excitement from fans and eager buyers keen to get their hands on the product.

Yet, take a step back for a moment. What is it, really, that’s so different about it?

Yes, it may look nice, but when it comes down to using it, is there much that sets it apart from competitors – or old iPhone models, for that matter?

There is much that’s wonderful about these smartphones. But when it comes to actually calling, actually using the telephone part of the phone, they aren’t anything special. And you can’t really go wrong to buy digital dect cordless phones instead – if you want to make a phone call that doesn’t disconnect if you hold it in the wrong way, or if you want a good, crisp connection on your call.

Indeed, while there is an array of apps at your disposal with a smartphone that make them handy for work – they still pale in comparison to a computer. Which you tend to have at work more often than not. They are not really phone systems for business, when you think about it – more phones for play. Phones for enjoyment.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that there is a large range of telephones out there that actually telephone better than smartphones, but they suffer from not getting anything near as good publicity.

Unless you’re BT, of course. These BT phones grace our television every day. But I’m with BT, and, well, that’s probably a blog for another day.