Chicken Times

Well, it’s been a busy few months with one thing and another and still there is no end in sight to headless chicken mode! This week has been “Back to School” week, but mine have both finished school now and yet, I’m still running around like said headless chicken. This is mostly the fault of South Western Trains.

Here’s why.

DD is off to college and needs a season ticket. This requires a 16-17 railcard (with photo) that took all of 10 minutes to buy online. Great. Then I tried to buy the actual season ticket so that she can travel on Monday. Nope! She needs a Photo ID. This, apparently, can only be obtained from the station and requires a printed photo. So I duly take the same digital photo I used for the railcard and wrangle it in Photoshop, rummage around to find some photo paper and print several copies in different sizes (just in case). Good to go.

Unfortunately, repeated trips to the station are fruitless, since the ticket office is invariably closed whenever we turn up, due to staff shortages. Eventually, DH is despatched to deal with it at a time when they will supposedly be open, but I’m not available. Photo ID obtained. Unfortunately, no season ticket, as you can only get them so many days beforehand. Argh! 

Ok, so I try the online purchase route – £7.50 for next day delivery and no other options, since apparently it takes too long to apply and get the digital ticket thingy. WTAF! It takes too long…digital…Argh! Argh! Argh! (The actual language used at this point was rather more eloquently colourful!) At this point my head is ready to explode as I have wasted rather more time on this than I can afford to given my current workload. 

*Deep breaths*

It seems that DD will be out today and so it will now have to be Saturday morning (assuming she gets up before the station staff decide to do a bunk again).

Oi! SWT – drag yourselves into the 21st century!