Princess Beffy

21^st Aug 2010

Saturday // 8am // 1 year ago

Thursday Night…

The Pretty Reckless gig was v good - I do adore Taylor’s voice. Anyways, I needed to get a taxi back to the coach station afterwards so I went to get cash out and found that on the first try it blocked my pin. I was like “o_O WUT?!” because I knew I hadn’t entered the pin wrong previously and that there was enough funds in there. Plus, the last time I tried to get cash out in London the same thing happened and I had to get a new card sent to me! So this new card, which worked fine everywhere else, decides to screw me over.

I jump in a cab anway, figuring I probably had *just* enough on me to pay for it and I’d get the driver to stop at another cash point to see if the card might miraculously work elsewhere. In taxi, check purse, “FFFUUUU!!!”. MUCH less cash than I thought. And I swear I’ve lost a fiver :( Starting to panic a bit by now, seeing as I already owe the driver practically all the money I have on me. I check that he can’t accept card payments (sadly not) and then ask to stop at an ATM. I knew it wasn’t going to work, I just knew, even though there was nothing wrong with the card, but desperate times…

And yep, this time the machine doesn’t even give me a reason for its refusal. Crapping myself, I ring my hubby (who’s 120 miles away) and beg him to call the bank for me. He does, while I have to explain to the perplexed driver what the hell is going on. He agrees to wait until I get a call back but, of course, the meter’s happily ticking away making me owe even more money that I don’t have! Hubby calls me back and the bank won’t do anything unless I ring them, even though it’s a joint account. I should’ve guessed that tbh, it’s like anything banks can do to piss you off just that ‘lil bit more they will. So I call them and the bloody automated system is being a utter bitch to me and it takes me about 3 calls to actually get put through to an adviser.

Finally, I speak to a nice Geordie lady (her accent was the best thing about this whole debacle!) who tries to help me in between “Hello??? Can you hear me?” exchanges because O2 have now decided to join the rest of my life in ganging up on me and not provide a decent signal. She manages to understand my problem through the crackling and agrees to unblock my pin before proceeding to try and sell me a credit card so that “if this happens again I have a back-up”. Ummm I’m sorry, love, but a) this REALLY isn’t the best time for all that and b) isn’t it your job to make sure it doesn’t happen again?! I politely decline and try to assure the taxi driver that I should now be able to pay him. Thankfully, he’d taken the sensible decision to carry on towards Victoria, knowing that if we sat still I’d be paying for nothing. Nice man :)

So, we stop at my third cash point for the night and, praise the Lord, it lets me have my money! Well, it lets Mr. Cabbie have my money. £30 to be precise. That’s right, by the time we reach my destination it’s cost me £30 for a 5 mile journey. I feel like sobbing. I make my way into the coach station kind of feeling like I’m missing something, even though I looked at the seat as I was getting out and there was nothing there, and I have my phone, coin purse & debit card in my hand. It doesn’t take me long to realise that my card purse must be missing. Oh craaap!

I sit down inside and take loads of stuff out of my bag just to check it’s not in there. It’s not. I resign myself to the fact that it is lost, probably never to be returned. Luckily, there isn’t much in there worth stealing, seeing as I have my cash and debit card on me - just an old card for a saver account with nothing in, my Oyster card, my National Insurance card and some store loyalty cards etc. I start crying though. All the embarrassment and panic of not being able to pay the taxi driver catches up with me, and now this.

On the coach I make a list of everything in my missing purse so I can inform the relevant people and then try to put it out of my mind. TPR have put me in the mood for rock so I go through my iPod listening to the most drum-heavy, guitar-driven tracks I own all the way back to Bristol. I tell my hubby to pick me up from the bus station at 1:40am. My estimate is correct as I get off the coach at bang on that time. Is he there? No. I ring him at 1:45 and he hasn’t even left home yet. I don’t have the energy to feel the anger and sorrow I want to so I just walk down the road a bit, look at some signposts and think about how much I actually love Bristol. It only takes hubby 7 minutes to get to me, which is awesome.

In that time I am approached by a couple who proceed to tell me how the guy has a fractured hand, they show me the evidence - it looks bad, and all the hospital (just up the road) will give him is paracetamol until he comes back tomorrow. He, apparently, lives in Bath and needs money to get home. His girlfriend is shivering and I feel really sorry for them so when they ask for some change I give them about £2. They both hug me and say they wish there were more people like me around. I’m like “awww!” for a second and then, as they walk away, start thinking that the hugs were some ruse to mug me. I frantically check but I seem to have everything worth stealing - phone, iPod, purse (the one that I didn’t already lose!) - so I give them the benefit of the doubt. I then muse that if there is such thing as karma then my good deed should mean that some nice person in London will find my purse, take it to one of the places a card in there is registered to and, somehow, I’ll get it back.

After a relatively decent sleep I think about my missing purse again and make a mental note to call all the appropriate companies. Then I get distracted by the interwebs and forget. Around 11:00am I get a call from a number I don’t recognise. It’s a Nationwide branch in Enfield telling me they’ve got a taxi driver there who has found my purse. I rejoice inside, whilst convincing them that it’s fine to post it. I’m not travelling all that way to get a purse that really doesn’t have much value inside it. The cashier jokes that I could pay the driver to bring it to Bristol, cue me thinking “PAH! Didn’t he take enough of my money last night?!”. She puts the driver on the phone and I thank him and apologise again for all the chaos I caused. He’s really sweet. Then the cashier tells me her manager has agreed to post the purse back to me. Woo! And that’s pretty much the end of that….

*Big sigh of relief* Well I’m sure no one really wanted to hear that fascinating story but I had to get it off my chest and explain my dramatic Tweet from Thurs night. The moral of the story is: It’s probably best to only have one purse to keep track of. It is also wise to assure you have enough to pay a driver before getting in their vehicle. Live and learn, children, live and learn.