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Well, every so often something happens that goes down in industry lore and it’s the subject of ‘do you remember the time when…’ type gossip every now and then for the next few years. Today one such thing occured.

A couple of weeks ago I got invited on a trip to Venice to look at some new kit, shake a few hands and meet some people from ______. Fine, I said, and agreed to come along. Then it all went very quiet. Nonetheless, I got my passport out this morning and left it in the hall so I’d remember to pack it this evening, and made a mental note to call _____ to ask where I needed to be, and when, to catch my flight as soon as I got to my desk.

They beat me to it.

Shortly after I arrived, I got a call.

‘Hi, Nik - it’s _____ from _____. You’re coming to Venice with us tomorrow, aren’t you.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘So I believe, but I’ve not received any tickets yet.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said _____. ‘That’s why I’m calling. They’ll be with you mid-afternoon. You’ll be flying from either Heathrow or Gatwick.’

No need to worry, then, although the ‘Heathrow or Gatwick’ bit was rather vague considering they’re on almost opposite sides of London. So, I got on with stuff, went off for a meedjya lunch with Sarah where we talked a mix of products and book plots, then came back and pulled things to bits in the lab, drinking tea. The afternoon fairly flew by, and before I knew it it was 17h and my phone was ringing again, a slightly nervous voice on the other end.

‘Hi Nik. It’s _____ from _____ again. It’s about Paris tomorrow.’

‘Paris? I was under the impression it was Venice.’

‘Yes - Venice. Sorry. You see, the thing is, we’ve been calling around the travel agents all afternoon and we can’t find any available seats on flights to Venice tomorrow, so we can’t take anyone from the UK.’

If I hadn’t been laughing so hard, perhaps through shock, I’d have been lost for words. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I have never ever known anyone to not book the flights weeks in advance. When you are taking a shed load of journalists to some foreign city for one of your most important meetings of the year, surely the first two things you get sorted out are the flights and hotel.

And this trip was being run by one of the world’s biggest companies.

So, the meeting will go on without the UK in place. Our hotel rooms will sit vacant, our gondolas will float around the canals with no-one to steer them, and our Cornettos will melt, uneaten.

I, on the other hand, will trudge into London on the all too familiar train, and no doubt recount several times the story of why I’m not being serenaded to the tune of O Sole Mio beneath an umbrella as I eat a San Marco pizza in the Piazza San Marco.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2003 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.