Waking up in one the most comfortable beds in the world is not something I like to do when I have plans. This is what happened on the Saturday morning after our Friday night in Manchester with the lovely RowTheBoat. Because we had plans it meant we had no choice but to get up and I really could have just lay there for hours. I hate our bed at home now. Mind you I did before but now my hatred has fuel!
Once awake and polished Row passed the coffees round and then offered to take us to the train station. Rather than suffer the indignity of a bus we I jumped at the chance, stopping in Didsbury first to get some personal items from Boots The Chemist (are they still called that or is it just Boots these days?) and activate our new Halifax Visa Electron cards at the nearest Branch.
I hate Ryanair with a passion but lets face it with Bert out of work and me having a demanding social life sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and fly cattle class. Ryanair know that no matter how many add-ons to the pricing structure they make you’ll still fork out the thruppence-halfpenny to fly with them as it’s better than paying the £200 per person per journey with British Airways or the three camels and your first-born to fly with Ethiad or Emirates. So everyone, including us, does all they can to bring the already Lidl value Ryanair fare down to a figure even a pikey would pay. To this end we got UK registered Electron cards as it’s the only credit/debit card you can use on the Ryanair website where they don’t charge you a million pound fee for using it. Electron cards are not available in Ireland so we got one from a UK Halifax and had them sent to my parents address, lying on the form that we were living there.
“Just complete the form, photocopy your passport, send it all in and your account will be opened and you’ll get your card!” said the application form! Seven to ten working days later our cards arrived at my parents and my mother forwarded them on to us. Brad rang the ‘activation line’ on a sticker stuck to the front of the card only to be told that we have to go into a branch with our I.D. Great! So we get the cards and can’t use them! Bastards!
“But we’re living travelling around the Ireland at the moment!” cries Bert, hoping his tears will convince the guy to activate the cards.
“Oh well,” he says, not really caring, “see you in a branch!”
So after a few more calls back and forth to the Halifax we’re assured that when we got into any branch with just our passports we can activate the cards and the accounts and have access to the £160 that is currently sitting in there doing nothing.
The girl in the Didsbury branch was lovely and had the kindest way of telling us there wasn’t a hope in hell of these cards being activated without a utility bill.
“A utility bill for a house we don’t live at in a country we don’t live in?” I nearly shouted. Instead I just seethed a little showing her how upset and gay I’d become if she didn’t activate them there and then and Bert whimpered a little knowing that once I’d finished telling her how fucking shite the Halifax is he’d suffer the mood and shouting and swearing for the rest of the day.
Either the smoke beginning to come from my ears or the look of utter horrow from Bert took effect on her and seconds later she handed our cards back and smilingly told us they were activated. In my head I knew that the second we got to the ATM they would be swallowed and we’d be arrested for falsifying our address details. That didn’t happen. Instead we took out the money peacefully and went for breakfast with Row into a cafe I could have sat in all day. Of course that couldn’t really happen as we had a train to catch.
Row delivered us to the train station in plenty of time for our train. Four hours early in fact, but this was at our choice not hers. We could check into the hotel in Hull from 2pm onwards but the train we’d booked on wouldn’t get into to Hull until around 5ish. Bert suggested we get an early train and Laura had said her ticket never got checked whenever she used it so to hell with it we’d just use a earlier one and enjoy the benefits of the hotel spa before meeting the other misfits in town.
We’d pre-booked our tickets about four years earlier to get them nice and cheap but all the damn machines that actually gave you the tickets had decided they didn’t like my credit card we’d booked with.
“Is it an Egg card because the machines don’t like them?” shouted a Virgin customer services guy. He worked for Virgin, he might not have actually been a virgin. Well he was at one point. Enough!
“No, it’s a Halifax card,” I replied.
“Is it Egg?”
“No it’s a Halifax Ireland Visa!”
“They don’t like Egg cards.”
Eventually the man that was actually trying to help and not the one shouting about farm produce took to his desk and printed our tickets out manually.
“Now, you must travel on the train you’re booked on, don’t go earlier ones as you’ll pay a fortune if you’re stopped.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir, of course sir, we’re good boys sir,” we said as we backed away and headed for the train sat at the platform. The train we weren’t supposed to be getting on. As we stepped on to platform 1 the whistle blew and we missed it anyway.
We sat in the station cafe for an hour until the next train, again not our scheduled service, arrived and we jumped on. Sure enough no one checked out tickets and while Bert read his Memoirs of a Geisha, I listened to various camp classics, took pictures and stared at the eye candy sat a few seats away. I’m sure he was quite concerned by my drooling but he never moved or said anything and stayed with us all the way to Hull.
Hull train station is like a mixture of something from Miss Marple and Grand Central station. It’s respectfully old and looked after but also tiled with echoey high ceilings. Laura and Vicki came to meet us and once the group hugs had finished and the passers by had stopped trying to figure out who was with who we grabbed a burger from McDogfoods and then went our separate ways. The girls to drink booze with the reprobates we were meeting later and us to our hotel.
Ever the one for forward planning (if you believe that you’ll believe anything) Brad had booked and paid for an evening meal in the hotel but part of the package stated we had to use on the first night. Well that was pointless as on our first night we were heading into Hull to get trollied so before we left Ireland he rang the hotel group and asked if we could change it for the Sunday. The agent said yes and just to talk to reception about it when we arrived.
“Orrr nurrr, we can’t do that!” said the Hitler-esque (fablous party-planner!) receptionist.
“But I was told on the phone I could!” said Brad.
“Nurr, we’re not allowed.”
“Well I don’t want it tonight, we have plans.”
“But she turld you on the fern that you could change it?”
“Yes.”
“Well as she turld you on the fern that you can change it I’ll change it.”
So, it was that easy! Why she couldn’t have just done it straight off is beyond me!
We were given our room cards and off we went. I hate ‘room cards,’ I’d much rather go back to the days of keys and key-rings the size and weight of a doorstop with the name of the hotel on so that you could wave it about and let people know which hotel you were in. Of course this kind of thing was only worth doing if you were staying in the Hilton or suchlike but even than some random skank would get a gander at your room number and while you were waving your key about talking about how wonderful the mini-bar is he’d be stealing your jewellery and mini-soaps and showercap!
The room was not like the picture, but they never are. We didn’t have a jacuzzi bath that we’d hoped for, or an iPod dock that the website hinted at. In fact, our bed hadn’t even been made properly but to be fair it was a nice enough room and clean. The brochure said our room came with ‘in-room comfort cooling’ which turned to be an opened window and a fan. We did have a big flat-screen TV through which made me annoyed that we’d only bought rucksacks! How the hell was I going to get that into it!
We relaxed on the bed for a while and then the usual “going out” routine took place. Bert had a shower and I ironed all the clothes. We rang reception to books us a taxi to the restaurant and our night out was about to begin.
Coming soon – The night out… the video of me pissed and my own little musical tribute to the night.
