Booking a Ticket

An act of desperation is booking a train ticket on the internet. Although easy enough, completing the screens and following instructions at the last moment I found something amiss.

Usually I prefer speaking to a human being. For some reason it’s nice, real people are different as opposed to automatic booking lines which work through speech recognition. Computers dehumanise the customer. They can’t answer questions either. Particularly simple questions, like “what are my earlier or later trains? What’s the cheapest ticket? And “tell me the way to San Jose?” You can’t joke with a computer. They are insensitive, autistic things. Cold, and likely to make humans hot, raging hot. How much joy it would give me to see a computer bungee jump without the rope. Microsoft have a lot to answer for.

I booked the ticket but only checked it the day before travel. Just to make sure I knew the coach and seat I would have to find. Alarm bells rang. I had “NO SEAT” reserved. It actually stated on the ticket “NO SEAT.” This could mean enduring a 6 hour plus journey standing up. Because London airports were fogged in over the last few days no internal flights were being allowed to run. This meant 100,000s of people were unable to board the plane so were taking the alternative rail and road. My liking for computers the internet

In addition the Home Secretary made an announcement the UK was now more likely to have a terrorist attack during this time than during the second World War. My comfort zone of security evaporated, a booked seat was banished. Paranoia had become a bed fellow. Unfortunately she has the habit of giving a pretty close hug as well. Sparkling Eyes was going to be more than unhappy if I was not there. I would be dead and the thing is I like my life. Especially with sparkling eyes. Alive or dead, terrorists, reserved seat and computer booking line, something had my cards marked.

Ringing up the help line I spoke to an Indian lady, whose name escaped me, not only did it escape me it flew away like an albatross on an ocean journey. Neither was it going to come back, the pronunciation was foreign to my own tongue. This could only be someone in a call centre half way around the world. A short and frustrated discussion took place, this person did not understand, I wanted a reserved seat, nor could she understand I needed to know what carriage to get on, her reply several times was “there are unreserved seats on all trains.” When I asked her about Heathrow and whether there would be more trains running, the sense I was speaking Swahili to her passed my mind. No this was the UK and I was born in a London Hospital.

The morning came and the train tested how fast I could run, it tested 200 people, we ran like crazed rabbits on LSD, seeing multiple greyhounds chase after our fluffy white tails. I got a seat. Learnt to dance, starved myself of lunch except for a packet of cashew nuts. Had a conversation with an elderly lady, learnt to speak Japanese and then woke up. The hours passed, I then got on a pc and wrote this BLOG. As for fantasies of bungee jumping pc’s now that would be a good way to put Microsoft out of action. But not just yet I’d settle for bungee-jumping-factory-hen-call-centre-not-good-english-speaker to go for a little long-high-drop no garantees of the bungee rope, of course also made in the same continent.