The night before we were due to leave, I planned an early night, I did my packing and last minute chores and I was just about to settle on the couch when I noticed I had a missed call and a message from someone unknown to my phone. Hoping it was a competition winner with a dumb last minute enquiry, I gingerly listened to the message. It seemed that Manchester, where they were all flying from, was bathed in a blanket of thick fog. Their flight was cancelled. Shit. I phoned the travel agent’s 24 hour phone line and discovered that it was true. I also discovered that BA do not have a 24 hour telephone number. What an outrage. I then spent approximately 25 minutes holding 11 seats on Manchester – Heathrow – Madrid flights that departed at 6.20am (2 hours earlier than planned and with a new stop off). The lucky winners would now need to be at the Airport at 5.20am and were even not guaranteed seats. Oh joy. At 9.45pm I began ringing round. I started with my colleague and mercy mercy me, she had just re-checked the web-site and for no apparent reason the flight was back. I immediately rang back the travel agent and hoped that she had not released the real seats to last minute sun seekers or that we would not have to buy them back at £1200 each. Ooh la la, they were still ours. I gleefully rang back my colleague and took the precaution of banning the competition winner from the internet until we were back.
At 7.15am the next day, while in the cab to Paddington (optimistic I know), I checked and both our flights were on schedule. I texted them both. The competition winner already knew, as she was in the Airport Bar having a beer. Hmm, hear alarm bells? Guess what? She was a joy and on meeting everyone at Madrid Airport, I found that they were all nice normal people. How lucky I thought as we jumped in 3 cabs to the hotel.
While trying to be polite I volunteered to take the worst seat in the cab and sat up front with the driver. This turned out to be a big no no. Before I sat down I removed a newspaper from the seat and placed it carefully on the dashboard. Unluckily for me I missed an envelope and sat on it. The driver noticed and glared at me while reeling off a torrent of abuse in Spanish. Again, I was a good girl in front of the winners, and I took the mad ramblings without responding as I normally would. I had just started to calm down when I noticed that the meter wasn’t running. I thought it odd, but again I didn’t make the normal fuss. The driver claimed not to speak English but he reacted a couple of times to things I said and I realised he was barking mad. So, I didn’t say a word when he laughed like a maniac and wrote down the fare at 40€. I thought just get away from him but I was a little unhappy when I discovered that the other 2 cabs had only charged 25€. Still I had petty cash, no real harm done. We checked into the hotel easily and arranged to meet outside the venue at 7pm. My colleague and I released from duties then spent a lovely afternoon being Laydee-like and shopped. We did this properly and literally until we dropped. We were tired and hungry by the time we sat down to eat and expectantly ordered a feast of pizza and green salad. Boy were we let down. The worst pizza ever and THE most rustic green salad ever. See for yourself.
The horrors are to be continued.
2 comments:
the suspense is killing us.....who are they operating on?
shark x
Later.....
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