I am on leave today and occupying myself with domestic administration. Your Christmas card is in the post. I have booked pantomime tickets. We will be gracing “Aladdin” with our presence. I looked at the online booking form. It was fine and very easy to use. Yet, vaguely, I recalled having spoken to a human being when making the booking last year and being pleased by the experience. I called instead. The woman in the box office talked about our seats. I talked about the height of my little family. She gave me options. We discussed whether it would be better to sit in the middle or closer to the edge or perhaps up in the balcony. She said that the rows were not very wide and sitting at the edge gave just as good a view and maybe that might suit better so that we could go in and out to the toilet (a likely eventuality). She got my details a lot more speedily than the online site and I was able to explain that I wanted the tickets to be sent to my parents in Cork rather than my home address in Dublin, though the latter was my billing address. She was also able to pronounce my surname properly. Non-Cork people always pronounce it wrongly. Are human interactions not much, much nicer than online ones? Or am I just turning into my mother?
Thank you to those of you who read for all of NaBloPoMo and further gratitude to those who wanted me to keep writing. What stamina you have. I have been ignoring the blog all week so if your carefully thought out and charming comment has gone unanswered, or worse, been caught in the spam filter, sorry, but I will be back to you. Oh, and have a link. If you are Irish, you will recognise this way of addressing a scandal.