A Glitch in the Matrix
Today, I believe we experienced a glitch in the Matrix. Yesterday, we drove south from our home in West Yorkshire and stayed in a Travelodge in Ringwood, in preparation for boarding Fred Olsen’s Borealis in Southampton tomorrow. Last night I watched the World Cup semi-final, and England lost to Argentina; no glitch there, then.
Things seemed to go awry when we drove into Ringwood this morning, in search of breakfast. In retrospect, we should perhaps just have bought a bacon sandwich from the Greggs attached to the Travelodge, but hey… we thought Ringwood might be able to offer us something better (how wrong we were).
Let’s start with the short stay car park, which operates through the Ringo app. No problem, announced Tracey, because she has the app on her phone. Which is great providing the app is working – which it wasn’t. Luckily, the car park machine would take change; unfortunately, we had no change. All I had in my pocket was a twenty pound note. After repeated, failed attempts to get the app to work, it was decided that Tracey would stay by the car and I would dash into the adjacent shopping area to change the note. How hard could that be?
I noticed a bank at the end of the street, which I felt would probably be better than trying to persuade a shop teller to change it, so I headed towards it, only to find it was closed – for good, it would seem. Huh… what now then? A quick glance at Google told me there was a post office a little further up the street… perfect!
Except it wasn’t. The queue for the post office counter was mercifully short, so it wasn’t long before I was able to whip out my £20 note and ask the lady behind the counter if she could be so kind as to split it into a ten, a five and five ones, so that I could pay the car parking. Nope, she said; “Sorry we can’t change a £20 note; we’re not allowed to”. I was slightly taken aback by this – this is a post office, after all. Surely, changing a note into smaller denominations would be one of their more simple, straightforward operations… apparently not. She resolutely refused, and I stood there, I’m pretty sure with my mouth open, holding a twenty, feeling slightly silly… Fortunately, a very kindly lady immediately behind me in the queue told me that she could probably help me, and took out her purse. It took a bit of rummaging, and we were holding up the queue (watched by the lady behind the counter), but she managed to split it exactly as I’d wanted – exactly how the post office had failed to… Glitch!…
Back at the car, as we paid for a ticket with a couple of pound coins, Tracey realised, rather belatedly, that she could have paid with a card.
Back in the shopping centre, we went looking for somewhere to eat breakfast. As we debated whether or not one particular little cafe looked suitable, a passing local remarked that their bacon sandwiches are to die for, which rather clinched the deal. It was extremely hot, as it has been for weeks right across the UK, so when we went inside we ordered two bacon rolls, tea and some cold water (because we were parched). To say the service was slow would be a gross understatement. There was only one other couple sitting at a table inside, although they did appear to be taking food out the back way to a garden, which presumably was packed… because it took a good 20 minutes before any food turned up at our table (including the water). Sadly, the bacon sandwich was massively underwhelming (the bacon was thin, cheap and goodness knows what she’d done with it), and by the time we got out of there, time was getting on, and we had to be getting to the Southampton Cruise Terminal for our appointment with the Borealis.
Once we’d parked our car and been shuttle bus-ed to the port, embarkation was reasonably smooth, and we were finally on board Fred Olsen’s Borealis. There are lots of differences from what we’ve become used to working on the Saga ships, which I’m sure I’ll mention as the cruise progresses. For now, we were just happy to be on board, and ready for setting sail to Norway.
