How I long for French bureaucracy and French public services.
So far, my return to the UK has involved:
* Paying the London Westend Ticket Service £5.80 for collecting two theatre tickets, in person, at the box office
* Standing in a phone box for hours, talking to five - or has it reach six or seven? - individuals, listening to a lot of ring tones and background music, hearing repeated "sorry we're very busy" messages and getting precisely nowhere in my calls about BT phone and internet services
* Spending two mornings in queues at India House, with a third in prospect, to arrange visas for a very expensive holiday
* Paying £4 for a single ticket on the Tube from Temple to Victoria. "It's the same even if you're just going one stop," the man at the counter assured me
* Failing to find any way of buying a TV licence. Post Offices, if you can find one, no longer do it. A couple of designated newsagents were unable to help. An online application failed at the first hurdle, seemingly because I could not enter a recognisable phone number (see BT references)
It hasn't been all bad news, though.
Boeing Boeing, the show we had to pay so much to pick up tickets to see, was excellent, a classic French farce splendidly acted. And I am glad to say the Salut! reader who feared we'd be unable to see the theatre, let alone the stage, with tickets at only £29 each was wrong. Our seats in the stalls were fine.
Of course, London looks a lot messier since I last lived there. The blight of the free newspaper war means that Tube trains and streets are strewn with rubbish as people quickly get rid of the publications thrust into their faces. Piccadilly Circus seems untidier than ever with a gruesome new police prefab now in place.
But if I ever get a phone line - that was promised by today but still hadn't happened when I left the house - or the internet (due Friday, but I am not counting on anything especially after being told no order has actually been processed), I may even let BT have a piece of my mind. If I can get through.
* Apologies for the tardy correction of typos. My welcome back to the UK has not been a bed of roses.
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