Girls In Uniform

I knew that using this title would get someone’s attention……..

I was back at the hospital yesterday. With my ears. Well, that might be kind of obvious – I guess I should have said, “for my ears” and the ongoing attempts to get them right following my operation last February and various different infections since then.

I am very appreciative of the service I receive from the NHS – America wake up and listen to Obama! – but I did not appreciate the hour and ten minutes wait in the pharmacy. The reception at the pharmacy was staffed by two ladies of a certain age. I promise you, they were like something straight out of a Les Dawson sketch. They WERE Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham personified. But without the headscarves….

They did make the time pass somewhat more amusingly. Normally I wait patiently (how apt) trying to spot one of the several attractive young pharmacists that work in the department as they busy themselves collecting potions, lotions, pills and bandages in the background. I think it is back to that thing I have for women in uniform – air stewardesses, dental nurses, Avon ladies and the like. I am not sure why I have a thing about ladies in uniform. It certainly pre-dates the policewoman stripogram that my petrol station dealers gave me as a leaving present. It may have had something to do with Miss Diane in the original Crossroads I suppose……..but I digress.

Clearly Cissie and Ada were volunteering. I cannot imagine that they were being paid to receive their customers. They were having far too much fun. They were there for the company and to entertain the various people waiting for their drugs – fat people, old people, people with damaged limbs, people with hacking coughs, and, kids in school uniform who looked like the Cheshire Cat having been allowed to skip class on the first day back at school.

Cissie and Ada talked loudly. They must have done. Even through my infected ears, my perforated ear drum, my ointment plug and wads of cotton wool, I managed to catch every word of their conversation. They were doing the crossword. They were doing it badly. “Helicopter moving part, four letters”, says Cissie. “Blade” says Ada.  “A thread, six letters ending in d” says Ada.  “Cotton” says Cissie. This went on for a good forty five minutes or so until one waiting patient volunteered the answers “rota” and “strand”. “Oh, we’ve done it. We’ve finished. We’re cleverer than we look.” exclaimed Ada to Cissie, ignoring the fact that they had been helped somewhat.

Cissie and Ada greeted every patient with the same message. It could have been a script from Little Britain. ”Do you want to get a coffee? Computer is down. It’ll be a good fifteen minutes to wait.” Regulars would take their advice. They would go for a coffee in the cafe run by the Friends of Leighton. Or they would go to get their blood test done. Or, mostly, they would go to have a “quick fag”. Anyone over 60 would be invited to share Cissie and Ada’s thoughts on how we are “too dependent upon computers these days” and how “young people today wouldn’t know how to run a reception without a computer to rely on”. And, neither did they.

Cissie and Ada decided that they needed to share their mobile phone numbers with each other, producing brick-shaped objects that would not have been out of place on the set of “Wall Street”. Cissie, who wouldn’t know how to turn a computer on, didn’t know how to program a number into her phone. Ada, walked her through the process in excruciating detail, making several errors on the way and oblivious to the growing queue of infirm people clutching prescriptions and desperate to escape for another cigarette.

My stay was a little longer than fifteen minutes. This was due to the fact that the pharamcist had to check with the consultant that he really meant me to put an unlicensed lotion normally prescribed for bad knees into my right ear, and, because they needed to go back to the ward I had just left to get some of the ointment that I needed for my left ear. Apparently, the hospital pharmacy didn’t stock it because it only comes from Australia. As you can see, we are at the experimental stage in the treatment of my ears……

But, my drugs were finally dispensed and by a very attractive brunette with an East European accent and a nice white uniform. So, it was worth the wait.

Related posts:

Ear, Ear – the operation

The Avon Lady

The Air Hostess

A Tale of Two Hotels

C and I enjoyed a glorious weekend at the Goodwood Revival , an historic race meeting which celebrates the classic and classy in the period 1948 to 1964. It was awesome. The weather was fantastic. Foolishly we set out on day one without any sun cream. Consequently by that evening I looked as if my head was boiled (it’s the rosacea!) At least it wasn’t sore, unlike Lesley’s chest – we could have cooked eggs on that. And in some respects I wish we had. It would have been much, much better than the “food” we were served in the so-called hotel.

Indeed, the weekend was as much about the contrast between the two hotels we stayed at. On the Friday night we stayed at the Arrow Mill Hotel which sits in splendour opposite Ragley Hall.

The hotel is owned by two wonderful, friendly, and characterful hosts, Denis (who arrived very late in a shockingly striped blazer after rather too long at the 19th hole), and, the lovely Margaret, who blessed us with her company and good humour and who belies her 70 years. The staff were excellent. The food was excellent (they have a Nepalese chef who put on a curry banquet for us). The rooms were gorgeous – C and I had a four-poster. And, the beer was good. Consequently, our group of nine (including sister-in-law D, her partner Smithy and 5 of their friends) looked a little jaded over our bacon and egg. While C and I had retired around half past midnight, the lads had apparently still been putting the world to right past 3am and making good use of the honesty bar.

Our second hotel, for Saturday night, promised much too. The New Place De Vere near Southampton:

Their website claims “The name might be New Place but this Grade I listed manor house, set in 32 acres of lush parkland, is full of period charm……From the moment you drive through the wrought iron gates and up the driveway you know you’ve chosen the perfect Hampshire meeting venue.” Yeah right. It is a glorified Travel Lodge. I feel a complaint to the advertising standards agency coming on.

Our room, once we eventually found it, was nice enough. But modern – not a smidgen of “period charm” in the place. Mind you, it took some finding as the signage in the place was appalling. Instead of pointing us straight up one flight of stairs it took us all around the Wrekin (a Midland expression for going an unnecessarily long and circuitous route).

Most disturbing was the attitude of the staff. The two year old at reception (he sported several earrings!) was abrupt and unhelpful. He advised us that the restaurant was fully booked and was unapologetic and lacking in alternatives, seemingly content for us all to go without. Indeed, he even omitted to mention that their bar served bar meals! And so to the bar……..

No “period charm” here either. Indeed, the lighting in the bar was as subdued as the light beam at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Or, I suppose it could have been the glow from my head and Lesley’s chest……. And we found ourselves sat beneath speakers that were banging out some rather irritating hip-hop music, which was hardly conducive to chat and banter. The evening, therefore, consisted of a form of music tennis – we would ask for the music to be turned off, and then, another group in the bar who clearly did not feel the need to engage in conversation, would insist that it be turned back on.

We ordered bar snacks from the one menu they had (between 9). Our “food” arrived at various points during the evening (the concept of us wanting to eat together seemed beyond them). I had cardboard on a bun (which had been advertised as a burger). Our dirty plates seemed destined to outstay our visit, until D asked for them to be removed.

But then, the late previous night and a day in the sun got the better of us all and we retired early – around 11pm – and I spent the next couple of hours listening to the guy in the next door room snoring, and, climbing the wall! Have English hotels never heard of soundproofing? And, incidentally, why don’t they ever give you more than one small bottle of shower gel and shampoo?!?

By the way, SatNav let me down! Badly. I have an in-built system in the car. It is supposedly a super-duper system with real time updates which recalculates your route in the event of traffic problems and should you be foolish enough to ignore its directions. Now C has never been a fan of SatNav. She gets irritated by the voice and constantly disbelieves the advice that is given. So, en route to Goodwood (day one) we used SatNav to navigate our way from the Arrow Mill via the M40, M25 and the A3. But, once we got within spitting distance of the venue, C decided she new better. She chose to ignore the command “take the next junction”. She chose to ignore the helpfull bright-yellow sign declaring “All Goodwood traffic turn left”. And, we spent the next half an hour sitting in roadworks!

Words were exchanged. C declared that she would never, ever navigate again. Ever. Never. And so, that evening I had to entrust myself to SatNav to get us to our piece of “period charm”. Despite setting off a good 45 minutes earlier than the rest of our group we arrived at the same time. SatNav had deemed it better to go through the middle of Chichester rather than use the ring road. SatNav deposited me within a street or two of the hotel (we only had the post code) but it took a good 20 minutes or so of trawling up and down badly lit streets before we found it. C looked pretty smug. C still looks pretty smug. Damn you SatNav. This will come back to haunt me.

But, for the Goodwood experience it was all worth it. Now I am by far a Petrol Head and wouldn’t know an Austin Healy if I fell over one. But, I loved it all. Most people had dressed in appropriate costume (anything for the period 1948 to 1964). A few Johnny Foreigners had got it wrong – there were a number of 1920s slappers and flappers around with Italian accents. I was a James Herriot lookalike – sporting a flat cap, and a vintage tweed jacket that I had bought on the web and which smelled of dead people, and with a vintage pipe and pair of binoculars which I had found in an antique shop. C looked stunning dressed in a vintage 1950s dress, with vintage gloves and bag, and some gorgeous red shoes to boot:

We saw Murray Walker, Sterling Moss, and Jackie Stewart. We drank Pimms. We saw air displays, including a couple by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight- Smithy’s brother was flying the Spitfire. We drank Pimms. We sat in the sun. We people watched. We had burgers from a van. We drank Pimms. It was Hell! So much so that we have decided that this is to be a regular event in Middle Man’s social calendar.

Thank you all who shared it with us. Here are a few photos.

Classic cars outside the Goodwood Shop

Jackie Stewart

Smithy and Murray Walker

Sterling Moss

Spitfire and Hurricane

Dad

The Glamour Girls

Lancaster Bomber

Race Start

Spitfire

It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken!

 

It doesn’t taste like chicken 

What is it about the Service Industry in the UK? To be sure, it does very little “servicing”. Nor is it “industrious” if my recent experience is anything to go by.  As readers of recent posts will know, it was with some dismay that I discovered that it takes more than 14 weeks to buy a new Audi TT, being a cunning plot by those fiendish Germans to mess with the old supply and demand dynamic in order to sustain the retail price of their vehicles at ridiculously high levels – presumably in retaliation for our bombing of Dresden back in WW2 or something. As a consequence, I did not in fact purchase a new TT, electing to buy a nearly-new, ex-demonstrator model with lots of unnecessary bells and whistles that I will probably never use (such as cruise control). 

Yesterday lunchtime I was driven out of my home by the combined presence of Mike, the painter and decorator, who is in the middle of putting right a collection of DIY disasters (not all of them mine) that have taken place in the property over the years, and, the arrival of Cheryl, our cleaner.

 

Cheryl is lovely but she does like to chat. Mike is lovely but he does like a fig roll with his coffee, and a chat. I don’t do “chatting” so, consequently, I had stored up my chores for the day and promptly took myself off and left them to it. Maslow, our furball baby, likes neither disruption nor the vacuum cleaner nor a chat and not even a fig roll and similarly made himself scarce too. For some strange reason I was hit by an attack of the munchies and so took myself off to Kentucky Fried Chicken at the Grand Junction Retail Park in the mighty metropolitan Mecca which is Crewe. I know, I know. But sometimes only the deep-fried Colonel’s secret recipe will do. 

I entered KFC at 1.30 pm. There were just five customers in the queue ahead of me – a couple of likely-lad builders who were ordering a big bucket of spicy processed stuff with onion rings, fake ice-cream and a coke or something; an elderly couple with a purse full of small change with which to purchase their mini-fillets and fries; and a very easy-on-the-eye petite blonde girl.

 

Unfortunately, behind me there was a very uneasy-on-the-eye lard-arse fast-food regular who was having a very loud conversation on her mobile phone. They should be banned! Both! Uneasy-on-the-eye lard-arses and mobile phones should be banned from all public places. 

Tony Soprano once famously stated that all Blockbuster outlets are managed by rhesus monkeys (when arguing with AJ who had been sacked from one). The same is true of KFC it would seem. There was the usual array of inane teenagers sporting body piercings, tattoos, black eyes, baggy jeans, muffin tops and bum cracks, and not a GCSE between them. They all looked either stoned or asleep and in need of a good wash.

They were certainly more interested in chatting to each other, cracking jokes, and ogling the petite blonde girl just ahead of me in the queue, than in serving the customers. After taking the elderly couple’s order, the greasy oik at the till actually disappeared for ten minutes. None of the other staff, including the beanpole, hippy Manager that looked like he had been brought up on a Greenham Common peace camp and was best friends with Swampy seemed to know, or care, where she had gone. I think she was a she, but the beard was a little confusing…..meow! 

The petite blonde took her Zinger Tower and I stepped up to the counter just twenty five minutes after entering the establishment. Fast food?! The bearded lady had been replaced by jovial fat kid. Jovial fat kid prioritized helping his mate who had just come in to get an application form ahead of serving yours truly. And, without so much as an apology or by your leave, another five minutes later, he asked me what I would like. “A three piece Colonel’s meal to go, please.” said I. “Hold on” said he and disappeared around the back only to return with the magical words: “Sorry but we are out of chicken!” 

I was furious. “You what! You’re out of chicken!? What’s the name of this bloody place? It is lunchtime on a Thursday and I’ve queued for thirty minutes to be told that KFC has no bloody chicken!”. I may have used a word a little stronger than “bloody”. The response? An inane grin. I stormed out for fear that I was about to commit a physical assault. I took refuge in the nearby MacDonalds, pursued by lardy-arse and her bloody annoying mobile phone. 

Does anyone have the complaints department email address for KFC? Or, the telephone number of the petite blonde……?

Don’t Look Under The Bed

Don’t Look Under The Bed

What is it with hotels in this country (the UK)? My company has just shelled out the princely sum of one hundred and eighty of your British pounds to enable me to stay one night, yes, one night, in a central London hotel. This was not the Ritz. This was not the Savoy. This was not the Dorchester. This was a run-of-the-mill business/tourist hotel belonging to a well-known chain above Charing Cross station.  

In return for this money I got an “executive room” just big enough to swing a cat, a small TV with just five TV channels and four pay-for-view adult movie channels (anonymity guaranteed!), a Bible, a mini bar stocked with the ubiquitous mini-Toblerone and spirit miniatures, and an ironing board combined with a trouser press. The ironing board and trouser press were only big enough to cater for the clothes of a newly born baby and the bottom of the iron looked as if it had been dipped in bitumen. 

This was the epitome of British business hotels. There was a newly painted patch on the ceiling, clearly attempting to hide the point at which the bath in the room above had overflowed. There was one wall lamp missing from the dressing table area. There was the remains of someone else’s piece of toast on the armchair. And, the carpet was a tad sticky in places. 

I ate the complimentary shortbread biscuits and threw the cushions which adorned the “double bed” (two single beds pushed together with a double sheet which was too slackly fitted to prevent you falling into the crack) to the floor. I checked the ceilings, wall pictures and mirrors for hidden cameras, just in case.

I checked that the mini bar was fully stocked and that the seals on the miniatures had not been broken – it is quite common to replace the white spirits with water. Some people! 

At least the air-conditioning worked. It rattled and hummed and cooled the room to Eskimo-like temperatures (or should that ne innuit?). But, the rattling and humming was at least better than the stifling heat that would otherwise have ensued. And, the humming and rattling acted a little like white noise and helped a little to drown out the middle-of-the-night corridor conversations.

Hotel room doors are akin to amplifiers. The slightest drunken whisper in the corridor is amplified to a shout in your shell-like. And the drunks in these hotels are many and not prone to whispering. If it wasn’t amorous partygoers or drunken executives that I was attempting to block out with my air-conditioning and my iPOD, it was the constant click-clack of the fire-doors just outside my room and the rather noisy lift. 

Has anyone ever been in a hotel where that little dial in the bathroom, which is supposed to relay the sound of the television, actually worked? I haven’t. I think it is a real shame. I would love to be able to listen to the BBC News while having a constitutional.

As ever there was a chip out of the bath enamel and a shower that looked as if it had seen better days, presumably during the reign of Queen Victoria, and now did little more than remind me of the dangers of Legionnaire’s Disease. And, I am always just a little bit suspicious about the contents of those little bottles claiming to contain shampoo or shower gel. I fought my way manfully into the cellophane-wrapped brick which claimed to be a tablet of soap. 

As ever, the hairdryer was bolted inside one of the drawers and sported a wholly deficient length of flex, which required me to kneel on the floor in order to dry my hair.  And, is it just my imagination or do you think that the sheets always feel a little damp when you climb into he bed? That familiar rustle of starched sheets over plastic mattress cover. And believe me, no combination of the five pillows will produce a comfortable sleeping position. 

And, some bastard stole my copy of the Times from outside my door!

Worth every penny. I think not. 

Grumpy Old Man Part 5

A Grumpy Old Man On Holiday 

It is 07.40 in the morning. A Tuesday morning. The day after Spring Bank Holiday and, I am on holiday. Everyone else is at work. But, I am not. So, what the hell am I doing up at twenty minutes to eight in the morning? Waiting for a bloody tradesman. ‘Scuse my French, but I am not good in the morning. 

Actually, the tradesman that I am waiting for is the exception that proves the rule. To start with, he is not Polish. Secondly, he is punctual. And, he is trustworthy. He is competent. And, yes, he is very expensive. But, you can’t have everything. And, today, he is doing me a favour. This morning, before he goes to his paid job, he is helping me to refit the wooden worktop in my kitchen. For nothing. He’s a nice bloke. 

The kitchen worktop was removed because the boiler broke down and needed repairing. And, because the worktop was fitted over the boiler it needed to be taken off. It needed to be removed just four months after our very expensive kitchen had been fitted, tiled, and decorated. Decorated by the very man who is coming to help me this morning.

He is helping me this morning because I have been let down by the kitchen fitter who should have come to refit the very expensive beach wood worktop that he fitted in our very expensive kitchen just four months ago. Can you sense my frustration? Now I know that the more handy, savvy, do-it-yourself-knowledgeable types out there are saying that you shouldn’t have fitted a solid wood worktop above a boiler. I know. We knew that at the time it was fitted. We didn’t want to. But, we had no choice.  

Planning a new kitchen is worse then any global system implementation project I have managed. Worse than planning the invasion of Iraq. Not that I did that. And not that there is much evidence that the invasion was actually planned at all. No, synchronising the arrival of the kitchen fitter, the units, the skip, the electrician, the plumber, at the prescribed “windows of opportunity” is a complicated nightmare.  

People of Stoke, Staffordshire and South Cheshire beware of plumbers named Stuart. It was Stuart that let us down. He let us down badly.  We had agreed with Stuart to hand over large amounts of dosh in return for which he would move the boiler. He was going to move the boiler literally next to itself. Half a day’s work. Half a day’s work for five hundred quid. This was going to enable us to cut the worktop in a place that wouldn’t be aesthetically unpleasing. So that a small piece of worktop could be easily removed to get at the top of the boiler. 

Stuart, the plumber from Stoke, had one whole day in which to move the boiler. He knew this. He knew that if he missed this window then the whole fitting would be delayed by at least two months. Now don’t get me wrong, we knew Stuart. Stuart has been servicing our boiler for about five years. Stuart had fitted at least four radiators in our house. We had recommended him to at least two of our neighbours. You would have thought that we were considered to be good customers. That he may have wanted to keep us sweet. And, if not, you would have at least thought that he would have relished £500 for half a day’s work……. 

Stuart turned up late. Two hours late. Stuart was grumpy when he arrived. In retrospect, Stuart was always grumpy. Stuart declared that it was “stupid” to move the boiler. Stuart walked off the job. Never to return. Over my dead body. And he can whistle for the money that I still owe him.  

The boiler is still where it was. As a result, we could not cut the worktop. So, our very capable kitchen fitter designed it that, in the “very rare event” that something went wrong with the very modern, ultra-reliable boiler that we had had serviced every year and had absolutely no problem with ever, then the whole top could be removed to give access to the boiler. The boiler broke about six weeks ago. True enough, the worktop was removed as designed. The brand new sealant was cut and removed. Three bolts, a dozen or so screws. All were removed, and, amazingly, I managed to do it without breaking any of the very expensive, brand new, Fired Earth tiles.  

The boiler was fixed. But, I couldn’t get the worktop back. Not so it fitted in such a way that it would not warp. Not in an aesthetically pleasing way. And, the tap had developed a very irritating wobble. But not to worry. The kitchen fitter promised to “pop back” to help us in the event of us ever having to remove the worktop. Yeah right. I have been awaiting the “popping back” for six weeks now. Fortunately (?!?), Mike the decorator popped in yesterday to measure up for some decorating that we need doing. The study, the landing, the hallway, the skirting boards in the lounge, a picture rail, a new heated towel rail in the one-year-old bathroom to replace the one which fell off the wall at the bloody weekend! An arm and a leg. A small fortune no doubt. I sometimes wish that I had forsaken an Oxford education in favour of a plumbing or plastering course.  But, Mike is a top bloke. Totally professional. Perfectly punctual and reliable. Trustworthy. And Mike offered to come around this morning before going to a job elsewhere to help me out. So here I am. On my day off……….  

Grumpy Old Man Part 2

Customer Service Not

 Yet again I find myself at home, waiting for a BT engineer. BT. British Telecom. Waste of space. Is there somewhere that I can nominate BT as the worst example of customer service? Ever! The worst ever!The corporate vision, posted on BT’s website, proudly declares:

Our vision is to be dedicated to helping customers thrive in a changing world. The world we live in and the way we communicate are changing, and we believe in progress, growth and possibility.

We want to help all our customers make their lives and businesses better with products and services that are tailored to their needs and easy to use.

This means getting ever closer to customers, understanding their lifestyles and their businesses, and establishing long-term relationships with them.

We’re passionate about customers and are working to meet the needs they have today and innovating to meet the needs they will have tomorrow.

We hope that every time customers deal with us, their experience reflects our vision:
· we do what we say we will do – when we say we will do it – for the price we said
· we are pro-active and easy to do business with; we care
· if we don’t keep our promises, we make recovery our number one priority.

Bullsh*t! Well, I’m still awaiting a response to my complaint email of 23rd October 2006. That’s five months! I am not feeling a great infinity with the corporate vision at the moment. And, I am at home again because they failed to turn up on Monday, when I stayed at home a whole day waiting for an engineer. All, I want is a new extension for my broadband service. And, I’m paying them shed loads for the privilege. If they ever turn up that is.

My complaint of October followed an electrical storm which knocked out my home broadband service. My first call found me routed to an offshore customer service centre in Bangalore, India. Don’t get me started! Well, it was Friday 13th. I should have known better. They ran a diagnostic. They declared that they could find no fault. They declared that the fault must be with my router. My router that was safely in a box, in a cupboard, upstairs, and well away from my broadband socket at the time of the lightening storm. Now, I am not technically minded in the slightest, but……

They were insistent and refused to do anymore to help me until I had replace the router. I replaced the router. Nothing. Not a sausage. Still broken! I phoned them back. They ran a diagnostic. They found a fault. They promised to fix the fault within 48 hours.

Two days later I received two voicemail message. Now that did impress me. The first message claimed that the fault had been fixed; the second asked me to get in touch in the event of further difficulty. On my return home I tried to connect. Nothing. Not a sausage. Still broken! I phoned again. They knew the fault hadn’t been fixed, despite the voicemail that I had received. Apparently that was to tell me that a “copper engineer” had been to fix the line and now a “PSTN engineer” would be visiting, the following week, to fix my broadband. I was furious. I asked to speak to a supervisor. Oh, and what a smug “b” he turned out to be. I asked what had happened to my 48 hour window for fixing. He explained that 48 hours equated to five working days; seven calendar days. “Only on planet BT” I retorted!While I was on the phone to the jobs-worth, head-up-his-own bum supervisor, I received another voicemail, telling me that my fault had now been escalated to an “Open Reach engineer”. Later that evening, I received another message asking me if I was still having problems. I was.

Three days later I received a call to tell me that after further diagnosis, they had discovered that the fault was “underground” and that an “underground engineer” was to be dispatched in eight days time (c. 72 hours in the world of BT). Underground? We had been spun this yarn with past faults, only to find the fault was in the box thing up the telegraph pole in the lane outside of our garden. We live in the middle of nowhere. Darkest rural Cheshire. Our wires travel many, many miles to the property via overhead cable. If we have an underground problem then it must be in a neighbouring county! Hence my email of complaint. My complaint of five months ago. To which I have had no response.

The fault was fixed by the engineer when he did actually attend, five hours late on a Saturday. A Saturday when we were supposed to be staying with friends. It took less than ten minutes to fix. Apparently it looked as if the socket had been “fried” during a lightening strike. Really? What a surprise. Why hadn’t we thought of that? Oh, we had mentioned it…….

Well, there are just fifty five minutes to go before today’s window for my engineer (copper/PSTN/underground/whatever) arrive closes. I shall not hold my breath. Watch this space. If I can log onto broadband after his arrival or not I will let you know…….

In the meantime, should you wish to waste your time complaining to this customer-focused money-generating machine, the email address is complaints@btbroadbandoffice.com. But, chances are your broadband will be down so you won’t be able to. Don’t even bother to try and phone them. You will be lost in the endless circle of IVRs – “press 99 for…..” before they eventually hang up on you after having you on hold for fifty minutes. As they did on Monday……

It’s now fifty minutes to go………sigh. Oh, and if anyone wants a perfectly working router, let me know. I have one spare! 

 

 

 

Planes, Trains, And Automobiles Part 6

A Grumpy Old Man’s Trip To London

 

Well, it has not been a good start to the day. I am currently sat on the 07.13 Virgin Pendolino inter-city train from Crewe en route to London Euston. It is 07.35 and we have just left the station. This means that we will be behind all of the still-on-time trains with the likelihood that we will be further delayed. They seem to work on the principle that it is better to have one very delayed train than lots of slightly delayed trains. But, that seems like a very strange principle upon which to run a train company. Whatever happened to punctuality?

As ever, they haven’t thought up a decent enough reason for the delay with which to share with the paying customer. And I have paid. Through the nose. £275 for a First Class return! Extortionate. It is cheaper to fly to London from Manchester but, unfortunately for me, it is still less convenient.Crewe station is just ten minutes from home, and, after a couple of hours in which you can stretch your legs, read a paper, hopefully complete the Times 2 Crossword (although I am struggling with 5 down at the moment) and the Killer Su Doku, and maybe do some work, you are delivered to Euston station. Then it is just 15 minutes by Tube, unfortunately, before I am delivered straight to the office, which is alongside Waterloo station. Door to door in two hours forty five minutes if I am lucky. But, as with today it would seem, I am rarely that. Lucky.

Manchester Airport, however, is a good (or bad) 45 minutes drive away itself. With the heightened security you definitely now need to be there at least one hour before the flight is delayed. And you have all that hassle with your luggage and your clear plastic bag for your toothpaste and eau de cologne (Euphoria for Men by Calvin Klein). And, Heathrow is just not as convenient for central London, although the Heathrow Express is much better than the old crawl in on the Underground.

At least when travelling care of Sir Richard Branson, the food is generally OK, and the tea, coffee and alcoholic beverages (not at breakfast of course, unfortunately) flow much more abundantly than they do in the air these days. I am currently sipping tea, having already partaken of a grapefruit juice and a passable sausage sandwich with brown sauce. The bread was a little dry though. And, there is generally more to see out of the windows.

And, every so often, you get to meet a celebrity. Those of you who have read my earlier postings (Celebrity Spotting) will know that I had a very enjoyable chat with Pete Waterman once and nearly had sex with Sarah Lancashire. The more I think about it the more I realise that she wanted me. And, these new toilets in the Pendolinos are so much more accommodating than in the old days. Another opportunity missed.

I have also seen Patrick Moore, the male chauvinistic stargazer who recently complained about there being too many senior placed women running the BBC, and, the diminutive and foxy news reader Sian Williams recently. Which reminds me, I literally bumped into Susanna Reid, the other foxy if midget morning newscaster with the BBC, when buying my lunchtime M&S sandwich at Waterloo Station last time I was in the Smoke. She was quite startled and seemed a little spooked when she realised that I had recognised who she was. She was dressed all in white with a very long flowing coat. She had very white face make-up and very red rouged lips and cheeks, which made her seem even more alarmed. It was probably my fault. Living in the countryside and frequenting only small towns such as Sandbach and Holmes Chapel these days I get quite alarmed by the crowds in the big cities. I seem to have lost that knack of walking through a crowd without bumping into people. It can feel quite claustrophobic at times.

Well listen to me extolling the virtues of Virgin Trains. Mr Branson are there any jobs going in your marketing department?

On the downside, things can get a bit tense on board train. Especially in the Quiet Zone. Of course, the Quiet Zone is hardly that. Quiet. You still get the normal train announcements, and that strange beep beep noise as the Pendolino seems to tilt precariously when taking a bend at speed. You still get passengers chatting, passengers snoring and the like. No, things get tense when some jumped up self-opinionated, self-important oik decides that the “No Mobile Phones” sign does not apply to him (it is invariably a him) and proceeds to have a loud if disjointed conversation. Conversations are disjointed because the signal quality is so poor, conversations require a lot of redialling after thirty seconds of “hello, hello, can you hear me?” or, “I’m in a tunnel”). These noise abusers can often be found wandering up and down the carriage to annoy as many people as he (it is invariably a he) possibly can. Or they stand at the end of the carriage, in the vestibule as Mr Virgin calls it, next to the loos. They seem to think that they are less annoying there. They are not, it is even worse listening to the self-important oik on his phone with the carriage doors sliding open and then shut again, and again, and again, as he triggers them with his proximity.

Things can also get tense when the staff forget to reserve pre-booked seats or all reservations are cancelled because of a train cancellation requiring two or three trains to be merged into one. Pandemonium. Even on “normal” days, people ignore the seat reservations and assume that just because they are a party of eight they have the right to sit next to each other. I can feel myself getting tense. I shall move on.

Unusually, the train staff this morning are not Eastern European. They seem to be Scousers. So, they are as good as Eastern Europeans. Home-grown Eastern Europeans if you like. But it is unusual. Have you not noticed how, in the last couple of years or so, the service industries of our great nation have been overwhelmed by Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Albanians and the like?

I learnt at the weekend of a very successful restauranteur and property developer who only employs Bratislavans. He does this because they are reliable, polite, and punctual and have excellent language skills. So, nothing like Scousers then. He pays them the going rate so they are not cheap.

Every London bar, every hotel reception, every waiter and waitress, every shelf-filler in Waitrose, every bricky, carpenter and electrician. They are all Eastern European. Crewe has shops selling “Polish Food” now, and in parts of the country road signs are now displayed in both English and Polish. The influx of devote Poles has now resulted in the Catholic Church becoming the biggest religion in the country again.. Henry the Eighth must be turning in his grave.

No, it is the Australians I feel sorry for. And the New Zealanders. They used to have the monopoly on the London bars. I can only assume that all the Kiwis and Australians are now serving drinks in Warsaw, Prague, and wherever the capital of Bratislava may be. Although at least a couple of our Antipodean cousins could be found at this weekend’s Home & Garden Design Show in Tatton Park, selling Magic Shammy Leathers. How the Empire has fallen.

The train now seems to be crawling along. I don’t think we’ve even reached Nuneaton yet. Now, where’s that girl with the tea………. 

 

 

 

Planes, Trains, And Automobiles Part 4

Part 4 – More Leg Room Please

 I’m back. Did you miss me? We had a wonderful time. I am even a little brown. And, I know that you don’t want to hear another word about my holiday, do you?

But, how do the airlines get away with it!?! This was my first experience of economy-class long-haul. I know, I know. I’ve been spoilt and I should count myself lucky. But, seriously, how do they get away with it? I have seen sheep transporters on British motorways that have offered more wiggle-room than we had. Air France, shame on you!

We flew out from Paris Charles de Gaulle/Roissy . The French give the airport two names just to confuse you and to make it quite, quite clear that they are different. The airport is known everywhere in the world as Charles de Gaulle. Everywhere except France that is. CDG is even used as the international shorthand for the airport. You will get CDG on your baggage tickets. But, as soon as you land it is “Bienvenue a Roissy!” This is just some sick Frenchman’s pitiful attempt to disorientate you; to make some weary traveller panic that he is in the wrong place. Shame on you Charles de Gaulle. Shame on you France. Shame on you Air France.

We flew out on a 747 Jumbo. C and I were in row 25, in the window and middle seat. C likes the window seat. I am not sure why. You can hardly see very much in the dark and they make you shutter it for most of the time on long-haul flights. Except for take-off and landing of course.

Apparently, according to my mate Smithy the pilot, they dim the cabin lights and insist on having all windows open (well the little blind thing up – I haven’t actually been on a plane with windows that open) so that your eyes are adjusted to the ambient light. So that you can see better in the event of something happening. Something like crashing, catching fire, or being hit by a terrorist’s shoulder held surface-to-air missile. To be quite frank, that is the kind of thing I would rather not see coming!

As readers of my previous blogs will know (see the Planes, Trains and Automobile entries), I prefer an aisle seat. My motives for this are, well, many and varied but on long-haul the main ones would be a) you can get out of your seat whenever you want to for toilet or booze without disturbing those weird folk that tend to be placed in the seat next to you, and b) the extra leg room. You cannot imagine the relief of brief opportunities to stretch a leg down the aisle in between trolleys.

But, on this occasion, C got her window seat and I got stuck in the middle. A petite Vietnamese lady sat in the aisle. She was about five foot nothing and her legs dangled off the end of the seat without reaching the floor. So, the aisle seat with its leg stretching opportunities was clearly wasted on her! My legs, however, were parted either side of magazine pocket and my knees wedged firmly against the back of the seat in front of me. Now at six feet and an important half inch tall I am hardly a midget, but nor am I a giant. This leg room was frankly pitiful.

I was wedged in and there I stayed for the better, no, the worse part of eleven hours. The twee Vietnamese lady to my left popped a couple of sleeping pills during the safety demonstration, which for some strange reason does not include any reference to the fact that being completely comatose in the event of an “ on-board incident” can clearly damage your health and the health of the poor sod wedged into the seat next to you. Me. She was out of it. In the event that this plane went down, C and I were going down with her!

Those little bottles of water that they give you on long-haul flights aren’t to prevent dehydration you know. No, they are designed to be emptied and then used as a personal relieving vessel (piss pot) by people wedged in the middle seat and who cannot get out to go to the loo.

It is impossible to sleep well when your knees are stuck firmly against the seat in front of you. It is impossible to sleep when the dainty Asian lady next to you keeps wriggling in her sleep and banging her arse against your armrest. Sleep would not come, despite the best endeavours of the Air France trolley dollies who plied me with alcohol and tried to induce slumber via the in-flight “entertainment”. I use the word incorrectly. It was not entertaining. Normally, the movie “A Night at the Museum” followed by back-to-back National Geographic documentaries, in French, would be enough to bring a coma on. But not when you are wedged in the middle seat of an Air France 747. Not when you have lost all feeling from the knees down. Not when your knees are bleeding because they have chafed against the seat in front. Not when your next-door neighbour keeps rubbing her bum against your elbow. Not when your thoughts are filled with the prospect of deep vein thrombosis and the growing awareness that your bladder is full!

Please Air France. Can we have more leg room?

More Leg Room Please!

I’m back. Did you miss me? We had a wonderful time. I am even a little brown. And, I know that you don’t want to hear another word about my holiday, do you? 

But, how do the airlines get away with it!?! This was my first experience of economy-class long-haul. I know, I know. I’ve been spoilt and I should count myself lucky. But, seriously, how do they get away with it? I have seen sheep transporters on British motorways that have offered more wiggle-room than we had. Air France, shame on you! 

We flew out from Paris Charles de Gaulle/Roissy . The French give the airport two names just to confuse you and to make it quite, quite clear that they are different. The airport is known everywhere in the world as Charles de Gaulle. Everywhere except France that is. CDG is even used as the international shorthand for the airport. You will get CDG on your baggage tickets. But, as soon as you land it is “Bienvenue a Roissy!” This is just some sick Frenchman’s pitiful attempt to disorientate you; to make some weary traveller panic that he is in the wrong place. Shame on you Charles de Gaulle. Shame on you France. Shame on you Air France. 

We flew out on a 747 Jumbo. C and I were in row 25, in the window and middle seat. C likes the window seat. I am not sure why. You can hardly see very much in the dark and they make you shutter it for most of the time on long-haul flights. Except for take-off and landing of course.  

Apparently, according to my mate Smithy the pilot, they dim the cabin lights and insist on having all windows open (well the little blind thing up – I haven’t actually been on a plane with windows that open) so that your eyes are adjusted to the ambient light. So that you can see better in the event of something happening. Something like crashing, catching fire, or being hit by a terrorist’s shoulder held surface-to-air missile. To be quite frank, that is the kind of thing I would rather not see coming!

 

As readers of my previous blogs will know (see the Planes, Trains and Automobile entries), I prefer an aisle seat. My motives for this are, well, many and varied but on long-haul the main ones would be a) you can get out of your seat whenever you want to for toilet or booze without disturbing those weird folk that tend to be placed in the seat next to you, and b) the extra leg room. You cannot imagine the relief of brief opportunities to stretch a leg down the aisle in between trolleys. 

But, on this occasion, C got her window seat and I got stuck in the middle. A petite Vietnamese lady sat in the aisle. She was about five foot nothing and her legs dangled off the end of the seat without reaching the floor. So, the aisle seat with its leg stretching opportunities was clearly wasted on her! My legs, however, were parted either side of magazine pocket and my knees wedged firmly against the back of the seat in front of me. Now at six feet and an important half inch tall I am hardly a midget, but nor am I a giant. This leg room was frankly pitiful. 

I was wedged in and there I stayed for the better, no, the worse part of eleven hours. The twee Vietnamese lady to my left popped a couple of sleeping pills during the safety demonstration, which for some strange reason does not include any reference to the fact that being completely comatose in the event of an “ on-board incident” can clearly damage your health and the health of the poor sod wedged into the seat next to you. Me. She was out of it. In the event that this plane went down, C and I were going down with her! 

Those little bottles of water that they give you on long-haul flights aren’t to prevent dehydration you know. No, they are designed to be emptied and then used as a personal relieving vessel (piss pot) by people wedged in the middle seat and who cannot get out to go to the loo. 

It is impossible to sleep well when your knees are stuck firmly against the seat in front of you. It is impossible to sleep when the dainty Asian lady next to you keeps wriggling in her sleep and banging her arse against your armrest. Sleep would not come, despite the best endeavours of the Air France trolley dollies who plied me with alcohol and tried to induce slumber via the in-flight “entertainment”. I use the word incorrectly. It was not entertaining.  Normally, the movie “A Night at the Museum” followed by back-to-back National Geographic documentaries, in French, would be enough to bring a coma on. But not when you are wedged in the middle seat of an Air France 747. Not when you have lost all feeling from the knees down. Not when your knees are bleeding because they have chafed against the seat in front. Not when your next-door neighbour keeps rubbing her bum against your elbow. Not when your thoughts are filled with the prospect of deep vein thrombosis and the growing awareness that your bladder is full! 

Please Air France. Can we have more leg room?

Planes, Trains And Automobiles (Part 1)

Business travel is not all it is cracked up to be…………as my (2nd) trip to Argentina may demonstrate.

I arrived at Buenos Aires in the middle of a horrendous electrical storm. It was 8am local time and as black as night. Thunder and lightning were exploding all around us and I have never experienced turbulence like it in a big plane like that (an Air France Airbus). After 3 aborted landing attempts we were made to circle for an hour until the storm moved away from the airport, and, presumably, to waste a little fuel in case of a failed landing attempt. Which is known as “crashing” in non-aviator circles!. It was quite a relief to get down in the end.

The journey by taxi into the city from the airport was also quite interesting – much of the motorway and main roads on the journey were flooded and in some places quite badly…….I got my feet wet as the water was above the level of the taxi’s wheels in certain parts. At least it was warm rain…………………

Then it was work, work, work. Early starts, long days and late finishes. In fact I did not step outside of the hotel until 21.00 on the Wednesday evening – for a dinner at a nearby restaurant – and I left on the Thursday.

The 13 hour trip from Buenos Aires to Paris dragged quite a bit. This was mainly due to the fact that there was an Argentinean woman sitting two rows behind me who was travelling with two kids. One, a babe in arms, would wake up every two hours and scream the place down. The other, a toddler around two years old, would run away from his mom and chase around the business class section, climbing all over peoples’ seats. Including my seat. Which I was sat in. It was like sitting in a busy cinema while the people behind you performed Riverdance on the back of your chair.

I was forced to watch the Lord of the Rings dubbed in French (it is not quite the same – it makes Aragorn seem a little effeminate) on the in-flight movie channel, otherwise I would have gone completely mad and killed the little ba*tard.

So, I was feeling quite relieved, if not refreshed, when we arrived at Paris Roissy (the French deliberately like to confuse the international traveller by having 2 names for Charles de Gaulle airport) an hour ahead of schedule on the Friday morning, at 10am. My flight to Manchester was at 13.30 so I settled into the business lounge, had yet another glass of champagne to celebrate Birmingham City’s triumphant rise to the Premiership, and went to the gate at 12.45 as requested to do so by the flashing green banner on the display monitors. At the gate, there was a new message: “Delayed! Delayed! Delayed!” But no other bloody information to tell you why or for how long. And no bloody staff to help either.

So, I returned to the Business Lounge of Air France where there was a growing crowd of increasingly irate Brits. Apparently, the brand-new Air Traffic control systems recently installed in the UK (by EDS of course!) had completely failed and all flights to and from the UK were cancelled until the next morning, earliest. All hotels at the airport were already full. Aaargghh! The prospect of spending the night with a bottle of champagne and SKY Business News in the business lounge was not an attractive one. The homing instant is strong in this one and so I determined to find an alternative route home.

To make things worse, they could not find my baggage either. Of course, it had been checked straight through from Argentina to Manchester. So, I was forced to abandon it at the airport. I grabbed a taxi and crawled (it was the start of a bank holiday weekend in France) across the city to the Gare Du Nord and joined the long ticket queue for the Eurostar to London. Because of redevelopment in the station, there was no lounge at the Gare Du Nord, so I was forced to lean against a wall for an hour or so before boarding the train. I must have begun to smell pretty badly by now, so at least my personal space was preserved.

The train was absolutely packed ……and late. They had been flooded with stranded would-be plane travellers desperate to get back to the UK. It took 45 minutes to get everyone on board instead of the usual 15 minutes.

This journey was also “interesting” due to the fact that I found myself sat across from an obsessive compulsive with a drinking problem. He was probably thinking the same about me. Whenever a member of staff passed by he insisted on getting another drink of champagne. He would then go through this very, very strange ritual as part of the drinking process. This involved ensuring that the glass was dead in the centre of the table; turning it anti-clockwise 12 times (I counted) ; drinking it two-handed in 7 swallows ( I counted) ; cleaning the inside of the glass with his tongue; and, then turning the glass upside down and peering into it for 5 minutes (I timed it), turning it around 4 times, clockwise, to make sure that it was empty. I joke not. He was either obsessive compulsive or the couple of aspirin I had taken earlier to prevent the onset of deep vein thrombosis on the flight from Argentina were beginning to mix with my champagne and fatigue with some very strange side effects.

And so I arrived in Waterloo in London…..took a tube to Euston……..stood around for a while before getting a train to Crewe…..where I arrived, on time, at 22.30 and so home……………to bed. Total travelling time 27 hours 30 minutes. My baggage travelled for an additional 36 hours, finally arriving Sunday evening!

Possibly my worst trip, however, was to the Isle of Bute in Scotland. We had arranged to spend a long weekend there, at a Landmark Trust property, with friends from London. They were flying up to Glasgow on the Friday and picking up a hire car for the short journey by road and ferry to Bute. We, however, were planning to drive up on the Friday from our home in Cheshire – an 8 hour drive. And, as we had arranged the trip we were keen to be first at the property to check it out and make it warm and welcoming for our friends. This meant that we would have to be on the road by something like 8am.

I was a little miffed (to say the least), therefore, when my boss “summoned” me to a 2 hour meeting in Rotterdam on the Thursday afternoon. This was in the days when direct flights between Manchester and Rotterdam had ceased so the journey consisted of a flight to Amsterdam and a 45 minute train journey to Rotterdam, and the same in reverse. If my meeting finished on time I was to fly out of Schiphol around 7pm and be home for 8pm UK time Thursday night.

It was not to be. I remember complaining to my driver on the way to the airport – one of my privileges of rank is that I get an executive car service between home and the airport – moaning about my summons and the fact that I would have a long drive ahead of me on the Friday morning.

My flight out was, unusually, on time. My connection with the train (they run every 30 minutes) was also on time, as was the train itself. They are very efficient these Dutchies. (Mussolini would have been proud of them). And so, I arrived in the office around 11.30 local time. I then kicked my heels for a couple of hours and tried to look busy until my meeting at 2pm.

At 2pm I went into the meeting room and greeted my colleagues. “Not flying out tonight are you?” asked one of my teammates. “Yes”, I replied. “I have a day off tomorrow and am going to Scotland.” “Not flying from Schiphol I hope?” he replied. “Yes. Why?”. “Because there has been a fire at Schiphol and the airport is closed.”

At this point I left the meeting. I left the meeting that I had not wanted to attend before it had begun. I told my boss that I had to sort my travel arrangements as I had to be back home this evening otherwise all plans for the weekend would have been ruined and my wife would be, well, less than happy.

I phoned our travel department and asked them if they could transfer me to flights leaving from Rotterdam with a connection in City Airport, London. “All flights from Rotterdam are booked, Sir. There has been a fire at Schiphol!”. I explained that I knew about the fire and that I really needed to get home that evening. I enquired how likely it was that the airport would be open by the time my flight was due to leave. “It is unlikely, Sir. It was a very serious fire.” Apparently the Burger King in the main concourse had set alight. If you have ever experienced Dutch cuisine you would understand what a terrible calamity this indeed was. So, I enquired of my other travel options…..

My way home that day involved getting from the office to Rotterdam Central train station. I accomplished this by tram with no difficulty. I then had to get the international train from Rotterdam to Brussels, being the capital of Belgium, being the neighbouring bloody country. I accomplished this with no difficulty.

At Brussels airport the nice people at British Airways took pity on me and upgraded me to business class. This meant I had access to the business lounge, free alcohol, a British newspaper, and, free snacks – sandwiches, olives, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, processed cheese, popcorn and the like. This was great as I had been booked on the 8pm flight from Brussels (which meant I should be home at 9pm UK time – just one hour later than planned) to Manchester and I had 3 hours to kill.

I used part of this time to leave voicemail messages for C, my wife, who was out at work. The messages were along the lines of “You’ll never guess what has happened but don’t worry I’ll be back tonight”. I read a paper, did the crossword (this was in the days before Soduko), sipped my drinks, nibbled my nuts (!) and sent a few emails before sauntering to the gate at the prescribed time.

At the gate I found my fellow would-be passengers………and no staff. This is never a good sign. Nor did I see good signs on looking out of the window (the BA Lounge at Brussels airport has no windows). It was foggy. It was very foggy. It was so foggy that you could not see further than the windows themselves. We waited a while. As we waited the departure board began to flash “cancelled” alongside various flights with all too alarming a frequency. Eventually, a member of BA staff came to the gate and explained that the fog was set to stay and that it was likely that the airport would close. Our flight, however, had not yet been cancelled so we were not in a position to transfer to other flights with spaces that were expected to leave, nor did we qualify for free overnight stays in an airport hotel, nor could they guarantee a first flight out in the morning. Sh*t!. I felt my weekend and my marriage disappearing……

I didn’t care about money – the Company would pay. I just had to get home. So, I went to try and book an alternative flight. There were none. There were no flights going anywhere. The airport was closed. The first available flight out in the morning was not before 09.30 which meant that I would not be in time to make it to drive to Bute so my only alternative would be for Cathy to drive herself, and for me to fly to Glasgow. Cathy would not be happy. I was not bloody happy. Especially as all the airport hotels were already full! Passengers were beginning to jostle for space on benches……..

And then a glimmer of hope…….apparently our incoming flight was still circling. Apparently, our flight had a Manchester-based crew on board and they too were keen to get home tonight. They were circling in the hope that the weather would improve to enable them to land and whisk us back home to hearth and loved ones.

By 11pm the weather had not improved, the airport was closed and our plane had been diverted to Ostende. Fortunately, our plane was full of businessmen desperate to get home and sporting BA Gold Cards. I, being a KLM frequenter merely had a BA Blue Card which was next to useless. These Gold Card types were complaining vociferously and threatening all kinds of things as only pompous, self-important British businessmen can. Eventually, it was decided to send us to Ostende. Within the hour a couple of coaches were found and we began the hour or so journey by road to Ostende. I spent most of the journey making calming calls to C and checking out alternatives such as the Ostende ferry….just in case.

We cleared the fog. We arrived at the airport. We could see the plane on the tarmac. We left the coaches. The coaches left. We entered the airport. The airport was empty. There was not a soul to be found. The Gold Card Customer Service desk again suffered verbal abuse until they actually made radio contact with the Captain of the plane. The Captain of the plane managed to locate some airport staff and we eventually found ourselves on board. Eventually they found someone to de-ice the plane’s wings and we were able to take off. I spent most of the journey worrying whether taxis still operated from Manchester airport at that time in the morning or would I be stranded or, worse, have to call the wife out…..as I was sure that my exec car would have been cancelled.

We landed at Manchester at 2.30 am. The airport should have been closed at this time so I hate to think what fines BA had incurred to bring us home. As I walked through the gates into arrivals I was more than a little thrilled to see Ian, my exec car driver standing there, waiting for me. I was not so thrilled to see he was chuckling, none too quietly, to himself. I mentioned nightmare journeys, airport fires, wiping grins off faces and other such expletives. He apologised and explained. What I didn’t know was that within an hour of my call to the travel department, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam had reopened. Yes, there was a backlog of flights but my original flight home only suffered an hour delay. If I had just ignored the travel department’s advice and proceeded as planned, I would have landed five and a half hours earlier !! Ian had known of my weekend away and taken pity on me. He took me home.

And so, just one tram, one train, one coach, one plane, one car and three different countries later I crawled into my bed. Just six hours later we hit the road. We got to Bute on time. Our friends were late and grumbling about the one hour delay they had suffered on route – Easyjet. Travel virgins!. We had a great time! Thanks Ian.