The Longest Day of the Year

I know I should be writing reports, but I’m on that kind of adrenalin up/down whatever and I just can’t think about whether Joey has been a communicator or risk-taker right now. So I’ll get this out and then maybe I’ll settle down.

When I began this blog (isn’t that two posts I’ve started like this now!) all I wanted was to book my summer holiday. A combination of extreme weather, natural disasters, terrorist threats and indecision meant that nothing ever got booked. That was until yesterday, the longest day of the year and Fete de la Musique all over France and that is really what I should be writing about except… Well I’ll cut to the chase.

Up until about 1.37 pm yesterday I was doing fine, I was connected to the music, I was in front of my screen with relevant bits of paper on a roll writing reports, water and phone at the ready. No, no the phone thing had already happened by then, but I’m digressing.

OK the phone thing is that a certain unnamed phone company cold called me and told me that I had been selected to get a brand new spanking beautiful phone which did everything except copulate with you and I got a bit excited. Still before getting completely carried away with myself I did haggle them down to the ‘forfait’ (I can’t remember or maybe I never knew the word in English) I wanted, 120 text messages, international calls option, 2 hours, blah de blah de blah and all less than my current forfait. Fantastic! My arse… when the fabulous beauty arrived I wasn’t even allowed to get a sniff of it, first I had to be talked through the forfait options again and that’s when there was a catch. The 120 text messages had shrunk to a mere 20 and I had to pay 10€ extra to get my beloved thumb exercising communication method back. The salesman tried to convince me that he knew of no better forfait and that I couldn’t possibly pay cheaper elsewhere, but I sent him packing cradling my poor physically challenged (the 5 key is very temperamental) cheapo Nokia. Perhaps that should have been a sign that I shouldn’t be doing anything too challenging apart from listening to the music and writing reports.

Except Kimberly arrived telling me that there were NO FLIGHTS WHATSOEVER TO BALI. Strictly speaking that wasn’t true, there were some, they were expensive and they were being booked quick. After texting, phoning and generally causing Estrella to have a stress attack we got her card details off her and trekked off to my pad to do the booking. It was a very complicated affair, I was on the phone to Estrella, Estrella was in her purple spangly belly dancing outfit and Kimberly was doing the booking. She had three web pages opened at the same time and she graciously typed in all the details and everything while Estrella jingled down the phone to me. And then Kimberly pressed Go, go, go. Estrella and I began prematurely singing down the phone: “We’re going to Bali, we’re going to Bali” and meanwhile everything was very quiet from the front room.

“This is a bit weird.” Kimberly said “This has never happened before.”

“What?”

Kimberly laughed, she actually laughed when she told me this. “Well Estrella’s ticket is booked, but on your credit card.”

“WHAT!” That’s the tame version. There was lots of actual real swearing involved and it never stopped, so feel free to insert ‘FUCK’ randomly into the text from now on.

After lots of frantic checking it became apparent that one ticket was booked but on my credit card. So after the last mess up we booked the remaining two tickets ONE AT A TIME. Firstly booking my ticket on Estrella’s credit card; “That’s funny, that flight is cheaper than the last one.” Kimberly said. Then booking Kimberly’s ticket; “Oh, that’s the same price as the second flight. And then we checked all three confirmations and realised that Estrella was going on the 25th and we were going on the 26th. Now would be a good time to insert a FUCK.

We did try calling the airline straight away but of course everyone goes home for tea at FIVE O’CLOCK in the UK. So it was Fete de la Musique after all. We traipsed up the hill, veering from hysterical laughter to glum faces to streams of swearing that would put a trooper to shame. We wandered past the jazz band outside the Mauritian restaurant. We wandered past another jazz band outside another bar. “Oh great,” I grumbled as we came up to the bar where we were meeting Colleen and Siobhan. “We get the shitty percussion band that can’t even play in time.” And I sat down and then it began to rain.

We wandered into the bar and sat at the back and scanned the photos. I kept telling Kimberly that she would see things like that purple flower, that blue God, that huge wood carving in Bali and she could tell me what it was like when she got back. And then I looked and they were all photos of Bali, was this as much as I was doomed to see?

Estrella called after her belly dancing concert and little by little the whole extent of the fuck up slipped out as I wandered past a woman singing the blues on a squealing microphone, a horn band tuning up and finally arrived back at the jazz band who weren’t trusting the brief respite in the rain and were hiding in the Mauritian restaurant instruments firmly packed away.

So Kimberly and I called the airline this morning and within two minutes of trying to explain what had happened the (god damn what do you call a conseilleur in English?) was confused. “Not as confused as we are.” I mumbled.

But the long and the short of it is: WE’RE GOING TO BALI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yipee!!!!!!!!!! Hip Hip Hurrah.

We’re still going on different days, but we’re going.