Planning Day 88 - Thursday 27 December 2007

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my friends, family and Robbie Jackson. As I sit and type this on the days between Christmas and New Year I’m still in detox-mode from a fantastic pre-Christmas week of celebrating my big off and preparing to jump on a plane …

But … this last paragraph needs to be suffixed by one of those noises when the old vinyl records ground to a halt if a family member kicked the plug out of its socket right in the middle of Toyah’s It’s A Mystery! Neeeeeeeeeeeeeah! Is the only way I can think of to describe the noise in writing!

The delay has been caused by Lloyds TSB wanting to charge me £6 for every £100 I wanted to take out in cash machines abroad. Not to mention the commission on using the old ‘for everything else there’s Mastercard’. Yes there is a Mastercard you marketing buggers … that’s nicely packaged with commission if you use it anywhere outside a 34 mile radius of Stevenage. Now this really isn’t a big deal if you use it abroad a few times each year. But if you plan to conduct 200 plus transactions the bank charges soak up 5% of your budget and half of your contingency funds! So I’m sat in Gloucester’s Starbucks (they now have one of these and a Café Nero’s/Costa twenty paces round the corner … the old city’s looking up!) having opened a ‘bubbly for the shareholders’ Nationwide account a couple of hours ago. But it’s going to take a week or two to get me the cards so I have a while in early January to kick back and charge the batteries.

I’m annoyed at myself for not sorting this sooner because you don’t even need any money these days to open an account. But the exchange of contracts and completion date for Swallows Reach ended up being so close to Christmas that I didn’t have the money in my account and it took my eye off the long ball being pumped up from the back a la the England football team. Still – it was a top decision and gives me even more money to use having fun on the road! Selling property has to be the most annoying thing in the world. At least when you use the kind of solicitors I had. Ring/Ring. ‘Hello, Halfwit and Knobheads, how can I help?’ In the end I did a great bit of double-bluffing the lovely estate agents at Tydemans by sitting in front of them and saying the immortal words for any commission based service ‘pulling out of this sale’. I remembered the old John Jackson advice passed on to me by Robbie and went quiet letting them break the silence. It was broken by a flurry of phone calls and an exchange later that afternoon!

So the delay scuppered a superb set of flights ready to be bought on Christmas Eve. They had me whizzing round the globe and only once needing to back track or get a connecting flight to my destination. Which in 37,000 odd miles and 20 odd stops was nothing short of top work by Trailfinders. But I had to let them go and will now re-book next week when the Nationwide bank cards arrive. Not too bad I guess. Just means that the old ETD is pushed back from 3 January to, hopefully, around 10 January. Right around the proposed flight strikes. If British Airport Authorities want my opinion they should just give them that old-fashioned final salary pension scheme and get me on my way!

Just thought I’d end this post with a quick picture. Here’s what you look like when you’re living out of a rucksack and have to wash all the clothes you own. A huge thanks/pee off to Neville for catching me unawares and to Max Wall for the wardrobe ideas. I can definitely see a Nick Camen moment coming up next year …

For those too young to remember he took all his clothes off in a packed launderette and waited for his washing in only his pants … he was a male model ... unlike me!

More hi-jinks in the next post above. This is a double-posting day!