You may have noticed I’ve been bangin’ on for a whilie about my holiday to Majorca.
Would it or wouldn’t it be taking off in September? We’d to pay the full whack of our dosh about three weeks ago, my ever-optimistic pal assuming all was well and Tui would be flying us high. However, my suspicious schnozzle started twitchin’ when my quine told me someone she knew had tried to book a Tui summer flight from Aberdeen and zilch came up.
Then, last week, I heard through the grapevine Airport Taxi drivers had been told all the company’s summer programme had been cancelled. Panic, panic, panic. For some reason, my emails to Tui customer services weren’t going through, so on Thursday I turned to my trusty EE for help.
They got on to the tour operator’s press office and on Friday back came the response that, oh aye, we’ve “taken a dynamic approach,” we’re affa sorry, but our summer programme from Aberdeen has been cancelled. That was me mad, mad, mad. So, exactly when had this “dynamic” decision been taken to wreck thousands of folk’s holidays? Before how many had already been issued their final payment demands? And when were they going to break the glad tidings to us, who’d paid in June? Guess fit? Surprise, surprise, on Saturday morning – the day the EE carried the story – we got an email saying all flights were off. Fit a stoatin’ coincidence.
No wonder I’m a suspicious al’ cynic. I wonder how long Tui (such a daftie name to replace Thomson Holidays) would otherwise have left us thinking our flights were going ahead. Until they’d collected as many payments as they could squeeze out? If so, that’s a shocking way for any company to treat its customers. And how come, once again, it’s tail-end-Charlie Aberdeen that suffers, while Tui summer flights from other airports are going ahead? Airlines seem to take so many “dynamic” decisions to drop us from their schedules. Like we’re perched on the Arctic Circle. Or are our airport taxes too high?
However, even a cancelled holiday couldn’t ruin my weekend when it was my Toots’ joint birthdays on Saturday – her nine, him six. The plan was for a wee family barbie in my garden, but then my quine, typically, came up with something out of left-field – a bell tent from an Oldmeldrum-based company called Under The Teepee. The owners came the day before to set up this huge space, like a four-bed room. What a true whopper of a surprise when the wee yins set eyes on it. Spik aboot ower the moon. And, happily, the moon came oot just as they started snugglin’ inside with their mum and dad after midnight. They all slept like logs, while Nana, from her nearby window, kept happy watch.
Time to do our duty and get yon masks on
Fit a stooshie there’s been in England since Bojo announced customers will have to follow Scotland’s lead and wear masks in shops as from next Friday.
A Mexican-wave of agonised punters have stood up to protest the move is an infringement of their human rights, while feel gype Tory MP Desmond Swayne scraiked it was a “monstrous imposition”.
Oor ain Mikey Gove hasn’t come off too well either. At the weekend he was left with egg on his face saying mask wearing wouldn’t be compulsory, before his boss announced it deffo would. And this week, the high-flying Aberdonian was snapped in Pret A Manger bare-faced, just when he should have been setting a good example on the countdown to the new mask rule.
Of course these masks are uncomfortable, sweaty encumbrances we’d all be happier to do without. The point is, like social distancing, they amount to social responsibility.
At this critical time, it’s our duty to ensure the virus doesn’t spread. By wearing them, we’re helping to protect others.
Cases of Covid-19 in mask-wearing countries such as Japan and South Korea are a tiny fraction of ours. To petulantly, selfishly refuse to wear them puts every one of us at risk.
Sick joke as itv pay Vernon Kay £250,000 fee
So, isn’t it a bit of a sickener for ITV to trumpet this week they’ve signed up Tess Daly’s once-wayward hubby Vernon Kay for this year’s I’m A Celebrity for an eye-watering fee of £250,000?
Presumably he’s thought to be worth the money to make us laugh. Well, I doubt the jobless or the bankrupt will find him and his fee very funny.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.