I did something daft, even for me, and although I am rather ashamed and somewhat baffled as to how I managed it, I have to share it. As you know, I am the butt of most of the humour here.
An email arrived in my inbox with details of a National Theatre Live showing, at Vu Cinemas across the country, of War Horse. Ooh good, I thought. I have never seen War Horse and always wanted to.
The venues for the event were listed in the email and I began the frustratingly laborious process of booking at the nearest one, about 10 miles South of here. I clicked the link in the email and was greeted on the website with a single option, to enter my logon and password. This was particularly pointless as I had never been there before and so, had no logon and password. Undaunted, I used a search engine to locate the website independently. At last. Now, all I had to do was find War Horse and book. But there was no record that War Horse would be shown there, in fact I could see no evidence of a cinema screen, and as I had no desire to book ballet lessons, I returned to my email in search of an alternative.
The next nearest venue was a forty minute drive away. Oh well… I clicked on that link and hooray, there was War Horse, at 7pm on Wednesday 11th November (Armistice Day, which was the reason for this showing). I chose my seats and clicked on to the payment page. One last look to check that all was well with my choice of seats (Because I am prone to glaring mistakes, I get nervous about making that final commitment. I get the same feeling when I drop an important letter into the post box. It’s so final,) I was not surprised to notice that the cinema screen was at the bottom of the diagram not the top as I had assumed, and the seats I had chosen would have resulted in a serious crick in the neck. I clicked back and moved my seats. Success. After paying with PayPal, I patted myself on the back for noticing my error.
There was a ping. My confirmation email had arrived. To my utter astonishment, I had booked two perfectly situated seats . Perfect in every respect but their geographic location… in Cwmbran. That is a very long way to drive from the home counties on a Wednesday evening (I know. The picture is the Great Wall of China but, you know, it could be Wales).
It took a lot of undoing but I did receive a refund, and in the interrim, the show appeared on the website of the nearer venue. Of course, by the time Armistice Day arrived (today in fact), we were locked down again and the show was postponed.
This story made me think of Horace, who, in 2009, was at university in Leeds. Occasionally, she and her flat mates would order a delivery from Asda. If it consisted mainly of pizza and vodka, who cares; it was a long time ago. Now, she is married and living on the opposite side of the country, eating a mainly healthy diet. Anyway, when her recent food delivery failed to turn up in Lancashire, she made an indignant phone call to Asda. To her chagrin, her food had turned up, you guessed it, in Leeds.
Actually, I feel better now I’ve told you that.