Monday 11th January, 2016                        1500

The saga of the train tickets became just that, a saga. I am sure it has shortened my lifespan by a fortnight.

Last night Joan discovered she was still locked out of buying tickets, something I don’t quite understand but I am guessing is to prevent people from buying up tickets and then selling them on the black market. Considering the law was changed some years back so that you have to present a valid ID to buy a ticket and then when you go through station security your ID has to match that on the ticket, it seems rather idiotic to me to restrict the number of visits you can make online to buy them. I wonder if they throw you out of the train station if you go too many times? And what about gang bosses who go and buy dozens of tickets at the same time for their workers to go home in spring festival? Five and a half years and still I get slapped around the face by what I perceive to be insane practices.

I even tried to buy them myself through the hotel/travel firm I use, which is English friendly. I had everyone’s ID and with Joan’s help inputting the other two Chinese names I thought I was on to a winner. Click to purchase and…………..sorry, this webpage is unavailable! Arrggghhhh! Cue blood pressure raising twenty notches.

Only one thing for it, I had to bite the bullet and go the train ticket agency and pay 5y extra for each of the tickets. When I asked Joan about the one that was already paid for she advised that I could still collect it from there, albeit I would be charged 5y. Given that Anna was coming with me and stopping off at the train station would cost 4y in additional bus fares, it didn’t seem much of an imposition if it saved changing buses and hiking up and down the station hill.

But oh no, it simply had to turn into yet another of my days.

Anna was again late, never read my text telling her I would be at south gate at 1110 and came twenty minutes later, meanwhile I froze in the cold and wet.

Because I am foreign it turns out I can’t collect tickets bought online anywhere other than the station. So I had to go there anyway. Initially I thought the woman was telling me I couldn’t buy tickets at all and was ready to go into orbit, seeing as I have in the past been and purchased them on my own from the very same booth. We managed to buy five of the six tickets required and as it was freezing and raining I decided against walking all the way back to RT Mart. Instead we went into Lottemart (haven’t been there in two years) and bought two small bottles of drink for Joan, there was nothing else of interest. I treated Anna to KFC and then we ended up back at the station.

As always there were queues and we waited patiently. An extremely petite girl in front of me obeyed the rule that you don’t cross the yellow line and encroach on the person being served. Then some bloke decided he would just walk into the station and push in. That is one of my pet hates, so I asked Anna to tell him that he should get in line like the rest of us. His response was that the girl in front of me wasn’t moving. Of COURSE she wasn’t! She was doing exactly what civilised people do - especially at cashpoints and the like. Oh no, I’m not having that! He went to the back of the queue after my intervention, this was accompanied by very grateful looks from the girl in front and a beaming smile from the girl behind me.

Then blow me if another chap didn’t try exactly the same thing! By now I was fit to burst and he got extremely short shrift - I didn’t even ask Anna to do it in Chinese. He also went to the back of the queue.

Finally I managed to get the last ticket. Now all I need to do is miss one of the trains!

When we got back Anna wanted a lift to her dorm. She has homework to collect which should have been handed in downtown yesterday (she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “organised”) but on the way I needed to collect a package. The girl who gives me the proofreading jobs has sent me some speciality sausage from her hometown. Anna went in to collect it and true to form, the person needed was absent whilst collecting other parcels from town and wouldn’t be back until four.

Is anything going to go right?

Well actually, hopefully it just did. Alice can’t come to get her ticket until this evening so I have asked her to get my parcel on the way.

At least all I have to do is go shopping tomorrow and who knows, the cheddar they told Anna was on order just might have arrived by then. Something has to improve, surely……