ZELLA COMPTON: Booking a flight is modern day torture of the mind

Is there anything worse than trying to book a flight over the internet?
Drones are becoming widespreadDrones are becoming widespread
Drones are becoming widespread

My husband suspects that I am a communist, hankering after systems where everything costs a set amount. And, actually, given the stress that the free market causes me, I can see the attraction of any system which is anti-capitalism.

Flight booking, in a free economy, is such hard work. And that’s after the pain of making the decision about the destination which all the family wants to visit. You think you’ve found the perfect price with an airline only to discover, as you go to press the button, that the option has disappeared into an abyss.

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Or you utilise a scanner system which purports to offer the best prices on the web – ever – but then comes out at triple your budget. And don’t get me started on those websites which show you a list of dates with the cheapest prices next to them, but which then don’t actually have any flights in stock at those bargain basement prices.

It’s modern day torture of the mind, grasping for something which is just out of reach.

And why is it that airlines give their cheap seats to these agencies and don’t have any in reserve for people like me who just want to book a fight direct, without having to pay premium first class plus some?

It feels wrong that booking direct costs triple booking via a third party.

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And then there’re the scanner systems which are scanning other scanning systems and still you’re no closer to getting an actual company who’ll take your money, or who’ll agree with the first scanning system’s ages of child tickets. Ones which are designed to pull you into the super price deal, telling you that your children are still a cheaper price when in fact most airlines class them as adults the moment they’re off the knee.

It’s so painful trying to navigate when every site is offering the best deals.

By the time I actually get around to booking flights, I suspect I’ll have totalled up more time on buying the tickets than I will have on the entire holiday.

Relaxing never looked this good, especially when I am stressed up to the eyeballs with trying to get there in the first place.

JUST HOW CAN ANYONE PATROL THE PROLIFERATION OF DRONES?

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It appears that drones are in for some regulation, what with anyone being able to buy one and fly it anywhere.

Yes, there are already guidelines in place that prohibit certain activities. But as the number of complaints rise rapidly, about snooping and invasion of privacy, it begs the question just how anyone can patrol drone technology?

I wonder how long it will be before we’re installing a laser-policed high-fly area around our houses, only accessed by drones that have a security key for deliveries and the like.

Drones are amazing technology and, like many great leaps forward in innovation, they are already being utilised by criminals.

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If only the rest of us were so entrepreneurial when embracing change.

MY STORIES TURNED OUT TO BE AS STALE AS WEEK-OLD BREAD

Fabulously, one of my plays, How To Be A Girl! was invited to show in a theatre in London last week.

I say London, as technically it was London, but specifically it was in Croydon.

It was part of the Croydonites Festival of New Theatre, which my show could take part in being as I lived in the borough for a long time a long time ago.

It’s great to take that trip down memory lane.

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But I quickly learned that it’s really not so much fun for the people you’re with if they weren’t there the first time around.

It just doesn’t mean the same.

So my interesting stories about the location of my favourite restaurants – particularly tapas – turned out to be as stale as week-old bread.

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