Journal

Home from Home

After a completely painless drive back up the motorway from Liverpool, we’re back in my mum’s place. It’s only now that I’m back in Helensburgh, I realise that it has to be one of the maddest round trips I’ve done; flying to London, staying for eight days, getting the train to Liverpool, then driving back to Helensburgh – the full Planes, Trains and Automobiles experience. 🙂

It feels good to be home… well, in this home – and it felt good to be back in our home in Liverpool, too, especially after spending over a week living in a hotel.

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Tales from the Riverbank

When I made the reservation at the Park Plaza Riverbank a couple of weeks back I was booking rooms for myself and two colleagues at the same time. This shouldn’t have been a task of complexity for someone proficient in the handling of booking hotel reservations.

However, it didn’t come as a complete surprise when I called to check the booking to find that the person who had taken my original call had messed it up. In fact, it took three runs through the process during my check-up call to get the bookings as they should be. Hardly confidence inspiring, but hardly surprising, either, considering over 90% of the staff seem to originate from eastern Europe.

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Colin saves the evening

After arriving late at Earls Court tonight to find that the family area was only open for another 50 minutes, I was gutted that our night at the Great British Beer Festival would be ruined. Fortunately a steward by the name of Colin came to our rescue.

Colin told us that we could find further ticket information if we went inside the foyer. I knew this, and launched into rant mode to tell him that I had paid £30 for a season ticket so that I could go three times this week, but since the family room was closing there was no point in paying a further £10 so that Fliss and Elisha could come in for less than an hour.

He nodded and ushered us in, putting us through the turnstyles and directing us to the elevator that would get us up to the level where the family room was. He even offered to escort Fliss and Elisha to the family room while I went and got beer for the pair of us. Disarmed, all we could do was thank him profusely and head off to enjoy our night.

It was short lived, but it wouldn’t have happened at all without Colin the steward who came to our rescue. Talk about customer service, though – we’ll be going back tomorrow with a gift of some sort. 🙂

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