We love a winter holiday. Mel ‘needs’ sunshine because she’s SADS and I ‘need’ to go with. To carry the bags. And buy water. Loads and loads of water. So come Christmas time, we’re gone. And because you need to go far and wide for sun at this time of year, we book early. To put this in perspective, we’re planning next Xmas trip now. Even though the flights haven’t come out yet. But we’re going to Australia next winter because our mate’s daughter is getting married so we’re waiting, like vultures, for BA to make the flights ‘live’, then we shall pounce. Though instead of razor sharp beaks we use airmiles. Its an evolutionary thing.

So tonight’s trip was booked last Feb. 10 months ago. And its a big trip, all around Columbia, which is a very beautiful (apparently) and very large country. And we’re seeing all of it, except the druggy, murderous, gang-killer bits. Hopefully. So that’s sorted. Great. Done. Dusted.

Or is it?

Checked in last night for our maiden flight to Bogota and there’s a little problem.

We’d booked ‘extra leg room’ as its a night flight and we’re too mean to actually pay for business class travel. Avianca (Columbia’s) airline are the only ones to fly direct and they don’t take our airmiles so its ‘extra leg room seats’. Not that we have extra legs, just, cos…

These are emergency exit seats, so at the online check-in it asked the usual questions: are you disabled, do you know more than 3 people who are? are you a child? are you capable of opening a door in the middle of a TOTAL FUCKING PANIC!!!!!? Yeah, yeah, we’re fine and cool and able bodied and not children, blah, blah, blah. Then an unusual question: ‘do you speak Spanish?’ Ooohhh, in all honesty I’d have to answer ‘no’ to that really as quite frankly, I don’t. Barely a sodding word. “If you’re sitting in the window seat you MUST speak Spanish”. Well I don’t. Then you can’t sit there, end of!

So from February, we now learn, just 24 hours before take-off, that we possibly, probably, don’t have the seats we’d pre-booked 10 months ago. And may have to thus travel in the hold with the baggage. And this is discriminatory. This is an abuse. This wrong. And this is certainly now very stressful as I woke up at 5 this morning having been dreaming of being strapped to an airplane wing.

I hate… things.

Happy worrysome Friday; they’re getting back to us, they’ve dealt with hysterical phone calls before.

A xxxx