Blight of the booking fee

The advent of the internet, iphones and blackberries have all contributed to a life on the move, one in which the ever watchful presence of Facebook or Twitter means news travels like wildfire. If you are one of those who subscribe to such a life, for work or indeed pleasure, the attempt to keep up with the trends and pressures of instant communication can not only be tiring but downright addictive.

Since when did all our dealings become so important that we couldn't make them in our own time and not the other way around - I as you may have guessed do NOT subscribe to such a life - as we seem to be moving towards some kind of 'Secret of my success', Michael J Fox, wall-street hell. If it isn't another Facebook update intruding upon sexy sexy time, ('Oh but it might be important' - 'So I'm not?!!!' - Get the hell out of my bed, damn it!) it's the inability to function beyond drooling zombie at the thought of your poor defenceless phone being left at home and you being the last one to know what fucking Susie Derkins' boyfriend has been up to behind her back...

My point is the internet is a tool to help us in aspects of our life which can be done in our own time from the comfort of our own home. Hell if I'm booking over a phone to have tickets sent to me - why not book online and pick them up at the station? No paper wasted, no extra cost, right?

So, I swore. I am obviously upset. Here's what happened...

I subscribe to the Trainline.com whenever I have the rare ability to plan so far ahead as to take advantage of it's ...'typically 43%...' saving. This is great! The train is typically an arsehole expense which sees hundreds of cretins having to pack into Citylink or Megabus services and spend 4 hours with their knee's behind their ears and a radio-active toilet that'd bring a tear to two glass eyes.

So then, how much for a return to Edinburgh from Inverness?

£20.80

Brilliant.

click 'Purchase'...

'...what the hell?...'

I'm now at stage 5 of 6 in the purchasing process - purgatory! - the point of no return where all dreaded 'add-on' fees lurk!

'£1 booking fee?'

Exactly how does one book a ticket from an online ticket seller without incurring a 'booking fee'? Is this an electronic 'handling charge'? An admin fee for the computer at the other end?

Isn't that just the price of the ticket?

Needless to say Trainline.com pissed me off. OK. It is just a pound but how ANNOYING is that figure? You pay a £ to use a shopping trolley but at least they give you it back. Why not take my pound, invest it until my return ticket is used, then give it back to me? They can keep the interest, hell if I mind.

No.

They have to tell you it's because of a 'booking fee'

If they said something like 'This pound is for Davey Smith's leaving do next Friday and we're going to get him a giant inflatable cock and we're getting him shit-faced then handcuffing him to a transsexual prostitute', I'd be fine with that... Hell, I'd donate £10 if that were the case...

No. I have no idea where my pound is going, so I tried to find out.

Here's what the Trainline.com say about it:

'A £1.00 booking fee will apply to all transactions. If you book multiple journeys within one transaction then this fee will only apply once.

- (so what's it for then? A scrooge McDuck swimming pool? The arms industry? Supermarket shopping trolleys???!)

There is no additional charge for fulfilling your tickets (unless you choose special delivery).

- (fulfilling my ticket??? Are we dating or something?)

If paying by credit card then there will be an additional charge of £3.50. This can be avoided by paying by debit card.

- (And here's me with credit cards because I was too skint with all this credit-crunching going on)

Please remember that customers who have booked with us in advance make an average saving of 43%*

- (yeah, that's why I'm here. Now it's down to 41.3%)

*We compared prices paid on thetrainline (including the booking fee) with the cheapest fare available for that journey if bought at the station on the day of travel.'

- (Oh good, back up to 43% then - good for you, because only a moron or someone in desperate need of rearranging their journey does that and they get screwed over by the station too. If I booked this ticket in the station, I'd be required to have my bank manager with me to approve the transaction)

What was nice about this was that just below this fantastically generic statement they had this:

Was this answer helpful?

I clicked 'no'

Here's what I had to say about it:

...

Ok, so I lost it on the clipboard and it's already on it's way to 'George' in Mumbai who's likely fumbling through Yahoo translator looking up the meaning for the word 'arsehole'...

Unfortunately it is not something I can redo... what an anti-climax, what a pain... just like that pound charge.

Well, I guess I leave rather deflated - I hope they send it back to me in an e-mail... Either that or i'll find a nice surprise left on the seat I've booked...

Gizza Job!

Without resorting to running into the bay at the back of the croft I'm wondering how long I can sustain a life of unemployment. I suppose technically I am working on the house and that's pretty much full-time (although the last few days have seen some lethargy, perhaps egged on by the chronic weather)

The malaise of this run-down economy still hasn't been shaken and there's a feeling that the construction industry is a sore-headed bear slowly coming to after months, or rather years, of hibernation. Is it coincidence that the Smith's song 'How soon is now?' has popped onto itunes right now, or that I can't get 'the boys from the black stuff' out of my head.

OK, so things aren't that bad - still, in a bid to finance this pilgrimage of mine, I have managed to get a CV and portfolio together.

This is the second incarnation of a portfolio I worked on at the tail end of last year in preparation to moving up to Skye. I say second incarnation because I found it incredibly difficult to create any continuity throughout, at least in the layout format if not in the content. It may just be me or the fact that it's a portfolio of architecture but I found this incredibly difficult to do. There is no end to examples online and there are great ideas and graphical work available to inspire, not to mention some nice books on layouts and portfolio design such as:

'Design Matters: Portfolios 1: An Essential Primer for Today's Competitive Market'

ISBN - 978-1592536023

'The layout look book' by Christian Campos

ISBN - 978-0061149757

Both are reasonably priced and great for graphic ideas and generating ('borrowing') layouts.

So, after lingering in the art department in Waterstones for days on end I finally got to grips with Portfolio Mark II. This one is tailored to just one architecture practice in Skye, which is lucky really considering how long it took to make but is conjuring up the old basket of eggs idiom.

Job success aside, I've decided to blog it and show you some pictures:

This is the folder I made to house my work - I kept it blank to create intrigue - I guess I could've placed an image on it but the paper is A2 format and this would've been difficult to get printed. A sketch would've been nice but carbon smudges. No, nice and white!

Flaps to hold it down. These tore a little the first time I tried it out. I resorted to strengthening them with masking tape - not sure how effective this is but it seems to help. The paper is 300gm cartridge.

Inside I created slots for the A4 portfolio, an A5 'extracurricular things' and a personalised letter.

Obviously this kind of portfolio requires a lot of work and can't just be run off the printer but that's the point really. Being at a stage in life where I know exactly where I want to work and why helps - making this kind of impression is really important to me.

The layout of the A4 portfolio was, after many convoluted attempts, reduced to a simple A4 image on the left with text regarding the project and all remaining images to the right. The layout is unashamedly taken from the Wire magazine and is very effective yet simple.

The idea of the 'extracurricular things' booklet was to give a graphical/arty impression of what else floats my boat, outside of architecture - yes people, there is an 'outside' to this architecture machine

I have a thing for 'word art', unwittingly inspired by Nathan Coley who was a guest at our second year crit at the Edinburgh College of Art

The booklets were printed out in such a way that the front cover, for instance, would contain half of the first image on the left hand side and half of the last image on the right hand side (confusing, I know) so that when it came to binding them, I simply placed them one on top of the other and sewed them right up the middle - this was tricky in that there had to be an even number of pages for this to work, and the printer had to be exact in making sure that two half images would read as one when the booklets were bound. With the exception of one small quote which ran across both pages, the result was pretty good as you can see from this image.

With a bit of luck this'll get sent in the next week - getting to a post office is pretty tough up here, then again, I could strap it to a sheep...

Cheerio Facebook!

So it goes...

Alas if only we could all see the world as Billy Pilgrim does. This forms the basis of a novel I wish to write. Will I ever get there and are there enough things to do before hand to distract me, therefore avoiding this purpose?

I am getting ahead of myself - there will be enough time for that later.

Today I finally woke up and went for a run. After shattering my Clavicle in 5 places following a bicycle accident in Glasgow City, it has taken me 6 months to accomplish any real exercise - this is a small part of an idealist regime of which many exist in a long and winding list - and I felt every single moment of it. After the first few lunging strides, a surge of adrenaline rushed my body and suddenly I was swamped by delusions of marathon-winning grandeur. Just 2 minutes later (though it felt like 20) I had slowed to a snails pace and 5 minutes after that I was searching frantically for the extra 5 stone I must surely be carrying around my midriff. Not the goal I was searching for and 15 minutes later I returned home, red and swollen like a prickly pear.

True, every part of my tobacco-scarred lungs and pulmonary capillaries forced me to taste blood and I thought my heart might implode but boy did I feel good.

This small step is my first success in self-discipline - a quality I don't so much lack but very seldom listen to. Because of this and my desire to amplify it, self-discipline has been a notion I am exploring in a short story I am currently writing. Self-discipline however, not in the physical sense but in the mental and moral sense.

It's quite hard not to be smug about feeling you have just invented the 7 day weekend - even amidst the disapproving and often threatening expressions from your friends and family.

Yet even though I am aware this situation cannot and will not last forever (or indeed much longer than a few months) I am still free to pursue my dream and accomplish my goals.

Right?

Yes, and, but.

There is a fear lurking, as hard as it is to admit to myself, that any attempt to achieve will most surely be met with failure of some sort. A secret belief that a dream is all the more perfect when realisations that it may be doomed to failure are swept under the cerebral carpet, seems to retain the ludicrous notion of a classical perfection.

And yet it is such a flawed stance! It is a shame that the impossible notion of perfection still tempts us - often to much anguish.

So, 'self-discipline' could mean being courageous with your goals, willing to admit when you are wrong, engaging in activity or quitting Facebook for the last time.

Above all this, self-discipline must surely mean learning from your experience. After all, isn't that the meaning of life? To experience, learn and grow?

Now, to say Cheerio to Facebook!