Another rant

[Desert Orchid]

This time it's to do with online holiday booking processes.

Our surname has an apostrophe, being of Irish origin, but for some reason online holiday booking processes can't seem to handle the apostrophe.

Time and again we have to come out of the process and start again without the apostrophe and even then it doesn't always work either because the next letter either is or isn't capitalised.

Phone the company help desk and they say 'it's gone through at our end so try again', instead of just processing it for us.

They really don't want to help at all.

As someone close to the family insists, if our name was Muslim or Jewish and had accents etc on them there would be no issue otherwise the company would leave itself open to accusations of racism.

Somehow it doesn't seem to apply to our institutionally anti-Irish little country.

 

[Ian_Davies]

I haven't been outside the UK since 1994.

I miss the food in other countries, but it's an expensive way to eat out and there are plenty of ways at home to give dull-as-ditchwater British "Classics" like Sunday Roasts (boring) and Fish & Chips (yuck) the old body swerve and eat more interesting food of outside UK origin.

Hope you get it sorted, though, Maurice, you decadent, libertine, international jet setter!

 

[Desert Orchid]

I haven't been outside the UK since 1994.

I miss the food in other countries, but it's an expensive way to eat out and there are plenty of ways at home to give dull-as-ditchwater British "Classics" like Sunday Roasts (boring) and Fish & Chips (yuck) the old body swerve and eat more interesting food of outside UK origin.

Hope you get it sorted, though, Maurice, you decadent, libertine, international jet setter!

I NEVER (not sure how much more I can emphasise it) eat so-called classical British food when I'm abroad. The whole point of going to 'exotic' places - anywhere outside a 50-mile radius of Glasgow is exotic to me - on holiday is to embrace the culture, the traditions and the food (and, with a bit of luck, the wimmen...)

The holiday itself was all booked ages ago. We'd just got to the stage where you're asked to check in online (no idea why, you always have to go to the check-in desk at the airport anyway) before arriving at the airport and sending in passport details.

 

[NHughes]

(and, with a bit of luck, the wimmen...)

And if that fails there's always the 18-30's holiday ..

 

[Desert Orchid]

(and, with a bit of luck, the wimmen...)

And if that fails there's always the 18-30's holiday ..

If Glastonbury is my idea of hell on earth, then Club 18-30 holidays wouldn't be far behind.

 

[Ian_Davies]

Between the ages of 18 and 30, the last thing I would ever have done is go on a Club 18-30 holiday.

I was never a "lad's lad" either - didn't drink and a "night out with the boys" was never for me either.

And I've never been to a music festival and never would.

Being an incredibly boring betting geek doesn't half keep the operating costs of life down.

 

[Desert Orchid]

I said some time ago - and repeated it recently in the Men's Shed to some dropped jaws - that I've only ever been to two gigs in all my life (not counting the occasional Saturday evening slots in the men's union at Glasgow UNi (Shakin' Stevens was a regular there).

When the guys asked me which two, they were even more surprised when I told them: the Gypsy Kings (about 10 years ago) and ELO fairly recently (to tick one of my bucket list items).

The GK are coming back to Glasgow next spring so that's in the diary.

I do have one regret, though. When I was 18 one of my older brothers had two tickets for Frank Sinatra in the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. He had to call off at the last minute and since I was going to the men's union that night (just up the road) he asked if I would go up a tad early and sell his tickets at face value (£15 from memory, quite a lot in 1973) and buy myself a pint with the proceeds, which I did.

I really should just have sold one and used the other. I must have thought at that time I'll get plenty of chances to see Frank in person but it was never to be. A serious chance to see The Greatest gone...

 

[simmo]

This has reminded me of a couple of nights out at the QMU. Suffice to say I was very, very drunk.

 

[Dingo Bingo]

I think I've been spoilt. Never go on holiday these days, as we live in a holiday place. We went up the coast to Port Douglas a few years ago and stayed in a 5 star hotel for the weekend. Yes, the hotel itself was OK I guess, food was OK, but it was full of pretentious clowns. I remember sitting by the pool along side the designer swimsuit brigade and thinking "why are you all acting so pretentious, you're sharing a pool with a load of strangers and probably swimming in 2000ppm of childs piss". Once it was time for bed, I just wanted to go home. Now we just go up there for the odd day out and the best thing about it is the coastal drive there and back.

Something is also wrong with my passport, or I'm on some sort of 'list', as when I've been back to the UK, everyone just scans their passports, but it won't have mine and I have to wait to be interviewed at every checkpoint in every Country I pass through. Can't see me going back to UK again, parents now gone. Have considered South America as a next destination, maybe Costa Rica. I like Australia, but I honestly think there's a communist coup taking place (in a lot of Western nations too, but especially here in Australia). So yeah, I'm thinking of getting out in the next 2 years before we become financially trapped.