Going away and out on a limb to meet new people and have adventures is one of the most exciting things you can do, but also comes with a whole raft of stresses.
There’s always the chance that those who you’re going to stay with will get sick of you, or simply not turn up at the airport.
Even with the best wills in the world, that doesn’t mean that everything else will go to plan.
Today I was meant to travel down to Sheffield for a few days, but after not having slept properly in days, managed to sleep in and miss the train. Fair enough, that’s entirely my own fault. I expected to have to buy a completely new ticket. When I went onto the East Coast website, it allowed me to transfer the booking to the next day for a cheap web fare. After going through the whole process, it informed me that there were ‘no delivery options available’.
Having called up customer services, it became clear that if you book an advance ticket via East Coast the day before, you need to do it in one of their approved train stations, as their system won’t allow them to update bookings directly to the collection machines that fast.
There was a few problems with this, namely that the only approved station in Scotland was in Edinburgh, and that they wouldn’t give me the price I’d already been quoted. I asked why their system even allowed me to go ahead and choose seats at that price if it wasn’t possible, and the girl explained that “computers aren’t that smart”.
There you go kids… better abandon hope now.