Friday, July 21, 2006

Glyndebourne: Die Fledermaus

An early blog today, as Lord H and I are off in the afternoon to Glyndebourne to see Fledermaus. Hurrah! - the first of the season, and a lovely day for it too. We've booked our picnic so don't have to worry about packing, clearing or washing up. Double hurrah.

Popped into Godalming this morning to stock up on suncream etc, then, once back home, I started on my weekly review of work on Bewrite (http://www.bewrite.net), Writewords (http://www.writewords.org.uk) and YouWriteOn (http://www.youwriteon.com). Had a lovely review of "Maloney's Law" on the YouWriteOn site - thank you, Pamela - much appreciated! Am also trying to get some more of "The Gifting" written, but it's a struggle today. I must get that scene in the castle finished soon or I'll explode!

And there's more news on the dreadful, long-running AA saga - some idiot called "Phil" rang me up yesterday at 5.45pm (what sort of time do they call that??) to ask again (deep, deep sigh ... don't they read our letters or listen to our phone calls at all??) what our complaint was about exactly. He then tried to sell me three months free membership and a joint discounted deal with Lord H. I told him his customer handling technique was crap, and he should be dealing with the complaint in hand and not soft-soaping us with dubious offers. He became terribly anxious and spluttery, and when I asked him to make me an offer then, punk, he said he couldn't do it as it wasn't policy. When I asked for £100, he said that was too much and he could only offer me £40. This made me laugh as the Special Investigations Unit have already offered me £50 - don't these guys get all their facts straight before they ring up??? When I told Idiot Phil (IP for short ...) that, he became even more spluttery and rather rude, and wouldn't or couldn't put me through to the Special Investigations Unit - not surprising seeing as IP rang at a ridiculous time for business to be done anyway. So I simply put the phone down on him. The man was a fool, and I certainly don't want him ringing me again. I suggest the AA should put IP on a basic customer training course for starters - he's not doing the business any favours, if that's his standard technique! Anyway, the upshot is Lord H is going to ring them today and give them hell, and we'll see what happens next. Honestly, they deserve it - if only they'd handled us with a modicum of intelligence and courtesy in the first place, the complaint wouldn't have come this far but there's not a hope in hell of me letting it go now. As far as I'm concerned, it's their fault entirely. Losers.

Oh and, speaking of yesterday, our night out at the theatre to see Rik Mayall in "The New Statesman" was fine, but nothing to write home about. The second half was better than the first, but I can see why I never really watched it on TV in the first place. And you've put on a little bit of weight there, Rik, I see ...

Which leaves me with three nice things of today:

1. The good review of "Maloney's Law".
2. Glyndebourne - in anticipation
3. And please no more idiot phone calls from the AA!!! - now, that would be nice ...

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk

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