Even though I was sad to leave Oxford and everything and everyone I love there, I was excited about finally going to Ireland.
There were several misadventures, though.
I have to use Uber in the UK, since they don’t have Lyft. I had a ride scheduled to pick me up at 8:30 a.m. for a 9:01 train. Uber didn’t actually schedule it. At 8:42, they were still thinking about it, and there was an incredible wait for customer service. And I couldn’t schedule a different ride while they were thinking about it.
Finally, I called a cab.
When I got to the train station, there was an enormous line–the entry doors into the station weren’t working.
I got through at 9.
And then the train came.
A man offered to help me with my bags, though he was carrying four coffee cups in a cardboard container.
My heaviest bag fell backwards, and the coffee fell onto him.
(He wouldn’t let me give him money for a new shirt.)
I made my way to my seat, which was a window seat. The main in the aisle seat said to the stranger across the aisle (not to me): “there’s no assigned seating on this train.”
“I can sit somewhere else if you like, but my ticket has a seat number.”
I showed him the ticket.
He let me sit down, but explained that I was wrong because the reservation lights weren’t lit.
So I offered to move.
“No, no. It’s no bother.”
So I was stuck with him.
All of that made the traffic jam I hit taking a cab from the train station to the London City Airport seem much less stressful.
However, at one point in the cab, a guy tried to hail my cab when we were stopped. The driver told him he had a passenger.
The man walked to my window and said, “And what do you think you’re doing here?”
“Ummm . . . sitting in a taxi?”
The man mumbled things about us as he walked away.
My driver said that although he’d been a London cabbie for years, he had never had something like that happen before.
