Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Well, I promised Moans from Merseyside and this is what you're going to get....

My Ryanair flight from Oporto to Liverpool was cancelled and I had to fly to Stanstead, stay overnight and then get a couple of trains up to Liverpool during most of yesterday. Now that all credit card transactions in the UK are 'Chip and Pin', it was lucky I had some sterling on me - though not enough to meet the extraordinary prices of taxis and hotels around the airport. Not to mention the 50 quid for the one-way train trip. Good to be back in clinical, efficient Britain. But already missing inefficient, cheap Spain.

The only good news of yesterday was that the alleged reason for the cancellation was a strike by French air traffic controllers. So, yet another reason to boycott all products from this benighted place. Even the wine.

MAGIC MOMENTS

Standing in the Ryanair check-in queue, I misread their slogan of 'The on-time airline' as 'The one-time airline'. Accurately, in my case.

'Do you mean Liverpool in the north of England?' the ticket clerk asked me at the station. 'Unless they've moved it', I replied.

The ring tone of the phone of a young man near me on the train was the Muslim call to prayer. This was in Arabic, of course, but he spoke in Persian. Which I used to speak when I lived in Iran.

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