...the inevitable happened!

I'm writing this from the airport - I should have been on a flight 2 hours ago but I'm now waiting for the next one to the UK so I'll use this additional time to vent my spleen about Qatar Airways atrocious policies and customer service.

I booked a return flight to the UK a couple of months ago, on a UK credit card. Nothing too unusual about that I hear you say. Well I just so happened to lose my wallet (with all credit cards, driving license, etc.) last time I was in the UK. There were no issues with leaving the UK without it - I mean, why would there be?

So I try to check in this morning, but the checkin staff say they need my credit card. I say I've lost it. They say they need the number. I say I've lost it. People lose cards. That's why they're made of cheap plastic - because they're replaceable. Nowhere anywhere else in the world with any other airline have I run into this problem. I talk to the supervisor, she gruffly says there's nothing she can do. I talk to the sales counter - they say they need the number, or I can buy a new ticket.

No here's the rub. I'm heading back to the UK to get married. One of the last things I did was send as much money as possible back to the UK because we've got caterers, bands, and bar bills to pay. Anyway - why should I need to buy a new ticket? I've already bought one. They have the receipt. I have the receipt. The system says it's paid for. My identity is confirmed by my passport. I just do not understand why they need the original credit card as well? Seriously, what moron at Qatar Airways thought this one up?

They say maybe they can make an exception if I'm a privilege card member - and I am - but only if I've got silver or gold status. FFS! I'm heading to the UK to get married! I need to be on a flight today! You can make an exception for other people, but not for me?! Qatar Airways has a shitload to learn about customer service. I've only been out here a few months and was planning on always travelling to the UK with them - but never again! I'll bet you BA wouldn't dream up this Kafkaesque nightmare.

So I speak to my bank in the UK, and after explaining to them the absurd situation I find out my old credit card number, which I duly present to the sales desk. 'No, no' they say - 'we need the actual card'. Ok, you can imagine I'm pretty annoyed by this time but try to keep it together - after all they're the ones standing in the way of my ticket home. I ask how I'm supposed to present them with a lost credit card, when it's been lost. The very definition of lost means - gone, vanished, disappeared, unobtainable! I don't have it.

More phone calls. Nothing they can do. 'It's not me sir, it's the airline policy'. I get buffeted between the sales team and the checkin desks. No can do. You'd have thought I was asking to fly for free! Or without a passport! Absolutely madness. I can't even phone a friend up and get them to pay - because they need a physical card presented at checkin!

Finally I do some sums and figure out that I have just enough on my debit card and cash to pay for a new ticket. I'm told I can get a refund on the previous one. Minus the no-show fee of course. I am just about to fly into a rage at this point, but what can I do? I need to get home. If I had more money on me, or any other cards (they're waiting for me back in England) I would have told them to get fucked and bought a ticket with BA. So I wring out my pockets and scrape together enough to cover the cost. Not a small sum might I add. Arguing about the refund will have to wait for another day.

Although, in order to get the refund of course I need a letter from my bank, saying they cancelled my card, containing the card number and details about the Qatar Airways transaction in order to prove it wasn't fradulent. I'm sure my bank will laugh me out onto the street with that one. But at least I know you can reason with a UK company.

And so, the saga finally ended and they gratiously allowed me to get on a new flight. 5 star service? Only if those 5 stars stand for amateurish, unprofessional, dismal, bureacratic and total shit.

p.s. I might be not quite in the mood for the pub later, or very much in the mood. Today could go either way really. Does anyone fancy picking me up from the airport? I'm on QR001 to Heathrow...

is oddly disappointed yet relieved that it was but an illusion-- and a full-body dressed-in-shredded-clothes dummy... not a dead &/or maimed person.

It's astonishing how quickly your mood can change, isn't it? From a fairly jaunty start to the day I've rapidly regressed to a state of intense grumpiness, not helped by a train which was virtually empty yesterday being rammed today. Funnily enough, I do not enjoy sweating in a corner with a toddler yelping next to me and the sun streaming in through the train door windows. But while I'm in this frame of mind I thought I'd share with you my Monday, before this butterfly that's gracing the garden lifts my funk (or El Mog eats it).

Such a crappy day, with a wonderful 3 hours towards the end; it might almost be enough to make me believe in divine punishment and reward (almost). Let's start with me getting up at stupid o'clock to inject the cat early, then leaving to catch an early train. I was within a step of standing in the carriage when I realised I'd left the key to my desk drawer at home; this drawer contains my work laptop, and without it I can't work. There'd be nobody in with a skeleton for at least another hour, and since I needed to leave early there was only one option. I'd have to go home and get it. Which would be annoying enough at the best of times, but in a heatwave? By the time I'd hauled myself back and to the station again I was covered in sweat; filmy moisture all over my back, shirt sticking. Yeah. That's the way to go into the office. The train then kindly decided to stop at every signal between Hither Green and Lewisham.

The air conditioning in the office was virtually non existent and then, about lunchtime, very existent indeed - we went from sluggish torpor to the chills - with a bunch of work requests from people who contradicted themselves within the same sheet of A4. I actually needed to wheel out that old chestnut about walking away from your computer after you've written an email before coming back and checking that what you've put down is not, in fact, an incoherent bundle of patronising rage. But, I got through the day and home to inject the cat, bustling through the house like a whirlwind before leaving for the oven that masquerades as the Bloomsbury Theatre.

When one of the things that winds commuters up is a lack of information, it wasn't surprising to get the reason for the train stopping at every signal (again) from the group of women in front of me. Lineside fire somewhere near Charing Cross, they said. Which isn't a brilliant thing to hear on a Charing Cross train (and frustrating as hell when recorded voice woman keeps telling you it's due to "congestion"; yes, clearly, but are we going to be held here for hours while the fire is cleared?). After chugging slowly into Charing Cross, what do we find but that the ticket barriers at the Tooley Street side have either a) had shutters pulled over them (I didn't even know that was possible) or b) are all set to allow people in, not out. With a huge stream of people coming in from the tube (I later discovered the Northern line was also having huge problems), those of us trying to get out were forced to squeeze the wrong way through a permanently opened gate with screams of abuse being flung from people trying to get in. Of course, I eventually got to the theatre a minute after the show had started, and in my sweat and in the dark I managed to get us sitting in the wrong seats. Quickly rectified, but still not exactly great.

But what a show! A benefit for the Rationalist Association, it was hosted by a sleep deprived and manic Robin Ince; gave me a new way to pronounce feh-yuh-urious (thank you, Chris Addison); showcased some brilliant, little known female comedians (Helen Keen and Christina Martin; I don't think Josie Long counts as little known any more, does she? I didn't keep track, but I think the performer gender split may have been close to 50:50 which is almost unheard of for these things), got Simon Singh setting light to a gherkin and had AL Kennedy doing some reading. God, I have such an almighty girl crush on AL Kennedy. She's so brilliantly, insightfully witty and cynical, yet can still see the beauty in the world and turn it into the most perfect phrase you ever read, saying exactly what you've always thought about a particular thing but so tightly, so succintly, that you could never have said it like that yourself. And she does stand up. She's just amazing. (Seriously. Girl crush.) And I'm still singing the Schnapps song. ("Such mishaps because of schnapps.")

It was all just a bit of a shame that the couple in front of us spent most of the evening with their tongues in each others' ears (and this isn't just me being single and bitter; m'companion in the Arts, who is married and everything, also found them intensely annoying). And then they had the nerve to clap Marcus Chown hands-above-the-head when they clearly hadn't heard a word he'd said. They'd totally ignored their two friends, yet sat them on either side of them, so the friends couldn't even talk to each other. They'd have been better off giving the editor of the New Humanist their £20 in person and just buggering off to the Euston Travelodge to screw.

Perhaps you think my day ends with this brilliant, albeit slightly marred by horny morons, show? Of course not; the Gods weren't finished with me yet. I missed the train home by all of five seconds, at the perfect time in the evening for London Bridge not to have any sandwich or pastry shops open, just M&S with a seriously depleted stock. (Yes, when I miss my train and it's 11.15pm, I like to snack.) And OK, I let out a 'fuck' when I saw my train's doors closing but I generally contained my disappointment; unlike the middle aged man in a suit who had the exact same thing happen 10 minutes later. No, he thought it would be more fun to start shouting at the platform guard. "It's 23 minutes past! Exactly!" [And the trains doors may close 30 seconds before departure.] "You could see me coming! Why didn't you wait?" [Because he'd already started the departure before you made your appearance. They're not like buses, they can't just hang around on the off chance. Timetables to keep and all that.] "You miserable c**t!" [Same to you sir, with bells on.]

Things weren't even simple close to home. I walked past one guy up a ladder fiddling with what looked like wiring or a burglar alarm on a building, with his mate stood in the road looking out. Hmm. So like a good citizen I rang the Met to see if any of the Fuzz fancied having a drive past. Or rather, I rang the Met and listened to their hold music for 10 minutes while whatever was happening, happened, finished and went elsewhere.

Tell me, what manner of rites do I have to perform to ensure I don't have to suffer for my pleasures like this again?

We'll call this the "just bought a new car and now I gotta actually insure it" Fredric Effects sale. Featuring the first Grumbly Wolf built on a fibreglass PCB (awesome sounding, I'm making more of these), MXR MicroAmp clone, AMZ Mosfet boost and a Shin-Ei Companion Fuzz clone with some modern refinements.

All here!

Semi-related, here's an interesting Guardian Money story about Autoquake. Although I won't recommend these guys just yet!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/27/used-car-online-sales

hey knox peoples... b/c i benefited SO much from all knox back in my po' student days, i'm trying to help just a bit. they need like, 70 more donations (whatever size) to get the $100,000 they been promised by some crazy alum. brian gawor will sing you the fight song over the phone if you donate!

Right, I haven't updated in a while due to manicness of travelling and work but don't fret, I'm still alive and well. Only 2 weeks to the wedding now and I think just about everything is organised, at least that's what Jenny tells me and since I wholeheartedly trust her I'll go with that. My trip back home was busy to say the least, but I got a chance to check out the venue, which is lovely, so it should be a great day. All I really need to do now is figure out what I'm supposed to say in my speech. I don't want to ramble on for too long as we've got 2 best man speeches to go through, but it seems like I have to thank the world and his dog, as well as be funny and charming at the same time. Hmmm. Don't hold your breathes guys.

I'm flying back to the UK on Friday - but with no Jenny to meet me at the airport :( She's busy sunning herself in the South of France but I don't begrudge her as she's been great organising everyone so deserves a rest. I'm hoping the flight home will be less bumpy than the last one or else I might be a bag of nerves by the time I land. I'm also hoping that this time I don't lose my wallet - with all my cards, resident permit and driving licenses in it. Actually I can't - because I haven't got replacements for everything yet. I've been to the police station twice already and need to go again in the morning as they need all sorts of documentation, and that's without getting to the driving license part.

I think visiting home has made me a bit homesick. It was so nice to see England at it's best - in the summer sunshine. And catching up with friends only served to show what's missing out here, as nice as the people I've met are they're still no substitute for friends who've known you for years. I'm sure I'll feel a lot better when Jenny comes out - I just hope we get on as well out here as we did back home. Oh well, pub quiz tomorrow - that should be a laugh - hopefully we'll do better than last month's atrocious 15th place or whatever it was.

I'm officially an employee now as I've passed my probation so it'll be good to now really get into things and push things in the right direction. If only I wasn't so distracted by homesickness and wedding preparations. I think people have noticed I've not been going out as much, but when I get back next month I'll get back into the social swing of things.

No other great news to report...Other than I bought a Pure internet radio - wholeheartedly recommended - and I'm getting strangely drawn to provincial English county radio. It's a damn sight better than the one English language radio station out here - that is in French for half the day! Oh, and my salary is dropping rapidly due to the strong pound (or weak dollar). Pah. Still considerably more than I'd get in the UK though, and anyway, money wasn't the only reason for coming out here.

Things I need to bring back from England next trip - sharp cooking knife (can't find a decent knife any where - want to get another Victorinox one), Molton Brown manly stuff, DVD player (we've got two so no point buying another) and a pair of trousers for my Hugo Boss suit that I ruined (although unlikely the shop will have it since it was last year's).

has just watched The Killers in Hyde Park.