Having decided we are not to go away anywhere hot and lovely this year I spent last night in deep conversation with my pal Fiona about where we could go. Last minute. From Scotland to ? Well anywhere really.
By 7am this morning I was online to Easyjet – I like them, they are allowed to fly to Geneva and the Swiss are so pernickety about their flying regulations that they don’t let any old cheap carrier fly in there you know. Although they did allow Globespan and I had a couple of knicker wetters with them.
Knickerwetter one was getting on the plane which looked like a flying toilet. There were actually bits of it hanging off at floor level in the interior. The overhead lights had so much fluff in them it looked like a fire hazard and my personal highlight going to the loo and finding all instructions (not that I needed any to go to the loo but still ) were in Russian or some other language where the letters aren’t even A B C. Comforting that. Anyway when we got home after kissing the ground for an hour and a half and telling God I believed in him after all, I wrote a long letter to the company, about 6 weeks later I got a stock reply that addressed none of the issues I had talked about. Safety is our priorty yada yada yada.
Second knicker wetter was similar story, loos swiming in what clearly wasn’t water, non English speaking crew and the general feeling that it was an elastic band, a wing (or 2) and a prayer that kept us up there. Wrote another letter of complaint and didn’t even get a reply. Phoned them and told them and then 6 weeks later exactly the same letter I had received last time arrived. Pathetic.
When they did go out of business my eyebrow didn’t even leave it’s anchoring. It was only a matter of time.
So Ryanair fly about 500 destinations from Edinburgh. They’re good, they’re cheap but they go too fast. They do! There are two tapes they play when they land. One starts with a trumpet voluntary and a hysterically happy Irish voice saying ‘ congratulations you are one of X million people who have arrived on time with Ryanair this year’ and the other one which puts the fear of God into me ‘Congratulations you are one of X m illion people who have arrived early on Ryanair’.
So what is the pilot thinking in his cockpit? If I get this little beauty down in 3 minutes instead of 5 I will get the ‘early’ tape played so put the foot down, let’s go for it. No no no. The old adage ‘it’s better to arrive late in this world than early in the next ‘ is one I follow especailly when flying through the air in a flammable cigar shaped incendiary device.
Oh dear I’ve just talked myself out of it again.
Damn. I’m off to google trains.
