The ups and downs

First down is that the rain has washed away all the snow. At least we had it. Did I ever mention that I love snow?

As a result of last summer's flight irritations, my son Ben was given a voucher for £75 or $150 to be used against another flight. It had to be used before the 31st of January this year, and I had to phone reservations when I booked in order to be able to use it. The voucher was sent to me by e-mail.

I attempted to use it against my own flight, but no, they weren't having any of that malarkey.
I complained in a non-whining way, that 31/01/07 was a ridiculous deadline, especially since the bloke I had spoken to at reservations had indicated that they usually gave at least a year.
Tough.

So, Ben had decided he would like to come out at Easter, so maybe I would be able to use the voucher after all.
I looked up the flights online, but yes, I had to phone to use it. The voucher, like I said, sent to me by e-mail, had a specific code on it.
'You'll have to fax us the voucher,' said the woman.
'It has a code, isn't it in your system?'
'You need to fax it.'
'You e-mailed it to me, can't I e-mail it back to you?'
'Fax.'
'But I'll have to wait until him indoors goes to work on Monday, the flights might have sold out by then.'

We ended up going in to Kev's work on a Saturday, then rushing back to book the flights. A five minute task thus took a morning.

So that was a down ending in an up.
A real down was reading in the Observer that a 'conservative report' put together by several thousand climate experts, who argued over every little detail and only published what they absolutely could all agree on, says that the effects of global warming will be swifter and more devastating than had been thought before. Bloody hell.

An up, an impossibly gleeful up was that Hillary has declared her candidacy for the US electoral race. I'm not sure exactly what I'm expecting from this, nor whether it's truly any of my business, but I had hoped that she would run, and I am pleased that she has thrown down the gauntlet.

I spoke to Austen on the phone this morning. Or this afternoon. It's Sunday, all time is one, although there was an annoying person honking his car horn in the middle of the street at 7 something this morning. That didn't go down a treat.
'Brilliant article in this morning's Observer,' said I, 'by a writer called Nick Cohen,'
'Yeah, you used to read him a lot?'
'I did?'
'Yes, he's one of your leftie writers,'
'He is? Oh yes, I mean he is, I just don't remember reading him before,'
'You used to read him all the time, X had some of his books,'
'X did, are you sure? Are you sure you're not talking about Nick Hornby?'
'What? Of course I'm not mixing up Nick Hornby and Nick Cohen,'
'Oh, ok, just wondering,'
'So anyway, what was the thrust of the article? I've pretty much given up on the Observer these days,'
'You have? Oh, well, ok, well, he was brought up in a politically active family, so I was able to empathise, 'cept, well, his was WAY more active, and my parents were liberals whereas his were socialist, but even so.....'
'Politics, yes, and Cohen was more of a traditional leftwinger,'
'Yes, yes, he did make a very strong distinction between left-wing liberals and traditional left-wing values,'
'Interesting...'
'It's a very long article, and it challenged some of my thinking, but it really went very deeply into the actions of the peace Nazis, he asks the question how the left-wing liberals can hold left-wing views and yet protest against the overthrow of a fascist regime,'
'Oh ok, maybe I'll read it,'
'It's a good article.'

So mostly of course that was to point out the article, but partly to worry about my failing memory. Hmmm....