Archive for April 26th, 2011

Plain sailing my arse

April 26th, 2011

Last January I mentioned that we had decided on a French holiday again this year.

The holiday is all arranged, with documents signed and deposits paid.  Sandy has her passport and we are all ready to go……..

Except that I forgot to book the ferry.

On Saturday, I sat down and called up the Irish Ferries web site to book the tickets.  I have had a few issues with Irish Ferries but the alternatives either involve driving to Cork or taking a long-cut across Wales and England.  So Irish Ferries it had to be.

The first thing that slaps you in the face as you enter their site is the trip booking section. Fair enough.  So far so good.  I carefully calculated the dates that I wanted to sail and carefully selected the outward journey on the correct day to Roscoff and the return journey from Cherbourg. 

It then insisted that I book cabins.

No problem there.  I booked a cabin for the outward and return journeys.

It then wanted to know all about Sandy.  I told it all about Sandy.

It then wanted to know all about me.  I told it everything except my religion.

It then wanted to know all about Herself.  This was getting tedious.

It then wanted to know all about the car.  Fucking hell!  I was rapidly running out of Prozac at this stage.

Finally it got to the payment section.  At fucking last.  It then asked if I had travelled with them before, and could I please enter my password.  It is two years since I last used the site, so of course I had forgotten my password.  I tried a few on the off chance but none of them worked.  Bollox!  I clicked the link to be sent a new one.

I waited for the email.  No joy.  Time passed and I got bored.  I tried a few more passwords.  Still no go.

Finally, about twenty minutes after I had requested it, the mail arrived with the Unlock Code, as they called it.  I went back to the site and entered the code.  It told me to fuck off.  It told me that the code had expired as I should have entered it within ten minutes of requesting it.  Now that would have been fucking difficult as the bastards hadn’t sent it to me by then.

I took a handful of Prozac and requested a new code.

This time, they were a tad quicker offt he mark and sent me another Unlock Code within five minutes.  I beetled back and lashed in the code.  That worked, and I set a new password.  Great stuff!!  Now I am getting somewhere.

Now that I was logged in, I went to the booking form to complete my payment, to find that the fucking thing was blank!!  I had to go back and select my sailings and book my cabins, and then had to tell it all about myself, Herself and Sandy all over again.  It finally presented me with a page with all the details on it and it asked me to check them carefully.  I did.  I read through the page very carefully as I didn’t want to book a wrong day or a wrong car or a wrong something else.

All was OK, so I clicked on the payment button.  It told me that the page had timed out for security reasons [?!].  I had to go back and start the whole fucking procedure again from scratch.  FUCK!  Another handful of Prozac.

This time I went at it like a greyhound out of the traps.  I lashed in all the information as quickly as I could and when it came to the confirmation page, I whipped past it and into the payment area.  I paid and it finally sent me a confirmation thing to print off.

I have no idea what I have booked.  I trust I am going to France.  Or maybe I have booked us a trip to Wales?  I have no idea who is going and in what car with which dog.  I put in the information too quickly and didn’t have time to cross check it.

So we are sailing on the Third.  I’m not sure what month, but we are definitely booked in.

I wonder where we are going?