May you rot in hell

*chases away crickets* can't see the keyboard, you damned pests

Ahem.

It's uncharitable of me to say this, but I hope somebody died. It's the only thing that would make the accident that held us in traffic through Chiswick for 2 hours and caused us to miss our flight worthwhile.

(4^th April edit)
I'd love to say that the last 2 weeks has given me some perspective on this, but I'm afraid the rotting in hell persists. We left our end of London just after 3pm and were assured by our cabbie that it would take no more than 2 hours to cut through London to get to Heathrow well before the 6.15 cut-off for check-in. Well, we were making excellent time when we reached Embankment just after 4, only to see a seemingly endless queue of cars heading into Chelsea before us. Some panicked phone calls later, and a 500m advancement in distance, and we knew that there was no way we'd make the airport in time. We finally eased our way clear of the congestion just after 6.30, and arrived at the airport around 7.20pm. I'm pretty sure we saw our plane fly over us as we approached too.

We'd been assured by the check-in staff when we called that they would make a plan of some sort on our arrival. The reality was somewhat different. A rather dismissive staff member tried to fob us off with the central office number (which would be available from 9am the next day) and even when we pointed out the compassionate nature of our trip, made noises of condolence but was grudging in her quick scan for availability on the other airlines. In the end, we had to make our way back home again, resulting in a £1250 7½ hour round trip to Heathrow.

Friday morning was a frenzy of phone calls. First call was to our travel agents, DialaFlight, to ask them to organise a replacement flight with Kenya Airlines. We then established with the insurance company that, on presentation of the police reference number for the traffic accident and a written statement from the driver, we would have a fairly straightforward claim for the lost air fare. When DialaFlight hadn't called us back, we got in touch with Kenya Air ourselves, and were told that they were fully booked until the end of April, so they couldn't simply put us on a replacement flight. We could go on standby until a seat became available, but they had no way of knowing how long this might be. They were adamant that a cross-airline arrangement was impossible.

Later still, having had no reply from DialaFlight, we called back, and were told that our agent had been waiting for a call from Kenya Air, never mind we'd expressed the urgency and cause of our situation. Knowing that we could get a refund on the KA tickets, we decided to book new seats on another flight. I left the agent with our details, as he seemed incapable of finding something immediately, and called FlightCentre, who have been reliable in the past. They managed to book us on a BA flight for that evening within 10 minutes, but for £900 each instead of the £600 we'd spent on Kenya Air. Nonetheless, we had to get to SA, so we knew we'd need to swallow the cost and move on.

This is the bit that galls me. I called DialaFlight one last time to see if they'd had any better fortune. The agent assured me the only seats he could get for us started at £1500. When I told him that we'd already booked seats for less than that through another agent, he 'checked again' and astoundingly found the same availability. When he offered me the amazing discount of £1 off our previously quoted price, I was outraged. Knowing our situation, he'd blatantly tried to sell us the most expensive tickets he could find, trying to capitalise on our urgency and distress. The fucking shit-eating bastard. I frostily told him that his attitude was appalling and that I had no intention of using his agency when he had clearly lied about availability to glean a higher commission, and hung up.

That gave us just over 2 hours to make our check-in, and we had to find a fax machine before then to send off a signed credit card authorisation to the FlightCentre agent - who was amazing at every step, by the way. We tubed our way, fully laden, to Barking and thence to Heathrow, arriving right on the 3-hour-prior mark and checking-in without fault.

And the drinking began. And didn't stop until today.