All because the lady loves...

I'm heading back to Edinburgh again tomorrow evening. Not as a reaction to how I've been feeling recently, just in case you were wondering. Rather I'd planned it all a while back, to celebrate the happy intersection between my birthday and the release of Spider-man 2 (my anticipation of which bears strong resemblance to that of Bart and Lisa upon the release of the Itchy and Scratchy movie - except I'm possibly a little more excited). The troops will be duly be rounded up on Saturday, and a goodly swath of my clan will be heading along to see the film after my belated birthday dinner. My Mum has exempted herself from the latter part of the proceedings - we tried to persuade her to come along, but she's not terribly keen on visiting the cinema - for reasons I've never entirely understood - preferring as she does a nice cup of tea and the latest episode of Coronation Street.

Of course, I very nearly screwed things up rather badly indeed when I booked my train tickets online. I was slightly worried when yesterday passed and the tickets had yet failed to materialise, so I called up GNER to investigate what was going on. They were quite adamant that the tickets had been dispatched in good time, so I asked them to check my details, and discovered I'd inadvertently transposed two digits of my address. A quick search on the internet and I leaned that I'd mistakenly given the address of a homoeopathic pharmacy a few doors down the road from me. I called them up to ask if they'd received any letters in my name, and a rather harried woman suggested I should call back when things were a little quieter. Having felt that I'd gotten off to a bad start, I called back and apologised only to find myself launching into an unexpectedly tense negotiation, forced to bargain for the return of my tickets. After the woman calmed down a little, we managed to conclude on a price and in return for my tickets she extracted the princely sum of: one sincere apology, one promise to be more careful in the future, and one box of chocolates (brand unspecified), to be delivered upon my return.

I rather suspect I've been taken advantage of.