This month we've been cycling round London, calculating our VAT on the fly, yo-ho-hoing on the high seas, brainstorming, planning dinner parties and gazing at beautiful pictures. It's a hard life.

Say what you like about London's eccentric mayor Boris Johnson (and many need no encouragement), at least he has a go. Here the mayor's passion for cycling has helped bring about Transport for London's bicycle rental scheme and thus the London Cycle: Maps and Routes app (Free). You get a great map-based guide to cycle pick-up points, route navigator which nips down those roads that bikes - but not necessarily cars - love, as well as a cost and rental timer. We also appreciated the station map that works even when your phone isn't connected to the Internet. As an up to date way of finding how many bikes are available at a particular pick-up point, together with costings and route finder through the city's labyrinthine streets, this is just the job. But don't try to use it while you're on your bike.

Having wrestled with the VAT system in the UK for years, we've become accustomed to letting our accounts program do all the heavy lifting for us, and are therefore still embarrassed when we're forced to calculate something on the fly. But now there are no more red faces round our way, thanks to VAT Pro (0.59p) which allows us to master the VAT/sales tax rates for 29 European countries and every state in the US. There are four pre-set rates on the home screen and fields for 'Exclusive' and 'Inclusive' amounts: just check the rate is correct, tap the figure into the right field and VAT Pro does the rest. You'll need to know your country code and VAT number before you can replace one of the pre-sets with a different percentage figure, but otherwise, this pretty much runs itself and is essential for anyone who needs VAT-style calculations fast.

What can we say about Plunderland (£1.79p)? It's as if a pirate game had been designed by South Park's Parker and Stone and then flung onto the high seas to make merry mayhem. That may be the gentle South Sea Island sound of a lapsteel guitar you're hearing, but those natives ain't friendly and neither for that matter is anyone else. So, as you pilot your ship, guided by the ghost of Captain Peg Leg - by tilting the iPhone this way and that, taking out pretty much everyone you meet with your cannon, leaving your foes to drown, bashing native totems into the dust and destroying rickety structures (often satisfyingly packed with gunpowder) - you can collect the treasure necessary to upgrade your armoury, or add a fancy bowsprit, crow's nest or even trade up to an entirely new boat. Includes three campaigns and a survival mode and thanks to the controls (tilting, tapping and swiping), some of the funniest, most chaotic fight scenes ever. Not one for the thoughtful gamer.

When you've tried to increase your productivity as much as we have by using conventional methods with only limited success, then maybe it's time to reach out a bit and try something different. And apps don't come much more different than The Brainstormer (£1.19): three rotating wheels, each containing an editable word list that's designed to mash up objects, people and places with adjectives and adverbs to produce unlikely and inspiring combinations. Give it a shake and it'll produce unusual jumping off points like 'Letting go', 'colonial' and 'café' or 'Slaying of a loved one', 'militaristic' and 'gas station', or 'invention', 'hellish' and 'thief'. You can create new brainstormers yourself and populate them with a specialised vocabulary or just insert particular favourite words and phrases into the existing word lists. As a way of jump starting or unblocking the creative process, we've found it to be a useful and inexpensive tool. And you can try the - more limited - online version for free at http://bit.ly/6617VF.

Shoppers at Waitrose, one of the UK's posher supermarkets, arrive at the store with certain expectations, and the Waitrose app (Free) more than meets them. Of course, despite the window dressing (100+ recipes from Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal updated weekly, various cooks' tools, nutrition guide, video lessons cookery tips and more), it's all designed to get you down your local store and spend some money. Thus, it's easy to find a nearby Waitrose, create, save and share shopping lists and recipes via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, work out what's in season, as well as what's on special offer at the moment. The interface is rather lovely - all soft greens and greys - and remarkably easy to navigate, given the amount of information that's packed into each screen. Now if they only accepted Tesco Clubcard points...

And finally, we've been enjoying an enormous range of wallpapers courtesy of iWallpaper (Free) which allows you to search for a specific type of picture for your iPhone's main screen or browse by category. There are some unexpected ones here to go along with Cars, Painting, Landscape, including Miley Cyrus, Cristiano Ronaldo and the inevitable Megan Fox. The quality of some of these is outstanding (for iPhone 4 users there's also a free HD version that uses all the extra pixels on that fancy new screen) and we've been switching home screen backgrounds like crazy, unable to decide on a favourite. Could do without the ads at the foot of the screen but that's a small price to pay for all this wonderful, free iPhone-friendly eye-candy.

Verdict
As above. All the apps are available from the App Store on iTunes.

Company: iPhone

Company: iPhone

Company: iPhone

Company: iPhone

Company: iPhone

Company: iPhone

Tags: waitrose heston blumenthal london tesco clubcard value added tax apple delia smith iphone