Archive for March 19th, 2007
When I was a child there was nothing more annoying than someone changing the rules of a game to suit their own agenda, especially when they were losing.
“No Angry, I said count to one hundred!” she would whine.
“Fuck off, you said fifty you lying slag!” I would articulately retort to my 6 year-old neighbour.
I was reminded of this petty rule changing the week before I went on holiday, when I was sent an email from a friend who had arranged our skiing trip.
“British Airways have reduced the baggage allowance from 32kg to 23kg!!” it leapt from my screen.
This was potentially a problem, so I decided to ring British Airways myself, for clarification. After being on hold for 15 minutes I decided to call the sales line, and after two menu choices and just three rings, I was speaking to a real live person.
“Hello, I am flying to, err, I mean I am thinking of buying a ticket to fly to France this weekend and I am looking for clarification on baggage allowances.”
“Well, it is 23kg per person.”
“But I want to take a snowboard and other sports kit, which weighs a bit more.”
“You are entitled to take another bag of sports equipment of up to 23kg.”
“But I only want to take one big bag, one that I bought specially last year, when your limit was 32kg!”
“If it weighs more than 23kg there might be a charge.”
“But why have you dropped the allowance?”
“Health & safety reasons.”
“Reasons which disappear when I pay the excess charge?”
“Err, yes.”
This led to a frantic final evening of packing whereby I tried various combinations of luggage to keep below the 23kg limit. Unfortunately, it was late, and I did not know where to lay my hands on 23 bags of sugar and giant balancing scales at short notice. So, aided merely by an Internet weight conversion tool, and a set of bathroom scales, I set about weighing the various permutations for my holiday luggage.
I learned a few things during this lengthy exercise, things like the fact that a weeks worth of pants weighs one and a half pounds. Or that you should keep some half used bottles of toiletries handy, because they weigh less than full ones. But most of all, I learned that it is fucking difficult to get all of your sporting equipment and holiday clothing under 23kg.
But finally, after two hours, and at a weight of 22.5kg, I called it a night.
At 7:30am the following morning I reached the front of the fast bag drop at Gatwick airport, and what did their scales tell me?
My bag weighed just 19kg!! After all of my efforts the night before, I was about to make three pairs of pants last seven days for no good reason whatsoever.
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