Getting it Wrong In America (c) Robert Hale 1990
Author's Note.
This journal has been altered more than most. The reasons for this will become clear when you read it. The names of people, hotels and companies have been changed. None of the names used in the journal are the names that were really involved and if I have inadvertantly replaced them with the names of any people or organisations that really exist then I can only reiterate that it is entirely unintentional and that the people and organisations concerned were entirely unconnected with anyone of the name used below.
The exceptions to this are Continental Airlines and their staff who were extremely helpful - just about the only people who were - and of course myself and Pete.
Chapter 1: Getting to America
The woman at the United States customs desk looked like someone's mother, someone's bored mother, or at least she had done a minute ago. At the moment she was favouring me with the type of stare that I had previously thought was reserved for drug smugglers and gun runners. At the other desk Pete had been waved straight through and was even now striding through the exit door that took him onto real American soil instead of the limbo of Airport Immigration. The no-longer-maternal official at my desk raised an eyebrow at my answer to her previous question and jerked a thumb towards the bag that was my hand luggage.
"In that case, " she said with the nasal tone of a Bronx cabby, "We'd better take a look in there. "
I lifted it up to the desk and opened it. While she took everything out and heaped it into an untidy pile I reflected on everything that had gone before and noted wryly that things didn't seem to be getting much better.
It was of course all Pete's fault. As the author I feel as if I’m allowed to blame anyone I choose. Looked at without prejudice and purely logically it was all Pete's fault. If he hadn't introduced me to Sunday League American football in Britain I probably would never have started to take an interest in Channel Four's broadcasts of the real thing. If I hadn't taken a totally atypical interest in the sport then when Pete suggested a trip to America to see some proper matches it wouldn't have seemed like a good idea. If it hadn't seemed like a good idea then none of the fiasco with our first attempt to get there would ever have occurred. If we hadn't had such a lousy sequence of events on the first try then we wouldn't have jumped at the second chance. If we hadn't jumped at the second chance I wouldn't be standing at Newark while my bag was being searched. QED It was all Pete's fault.
Pete had originally suggested the trip while we were standing watching one of the Birmingham Bulls' home games at a bicycle racing track and part time sports ground located almost underneath Spaghetti Junction. Looking around the non-existent stands and the brick shed that passed for a toilet and mentally comparing these facilities with the stadiums that I had seen on television it seemed like a marvellous idea. Comparing the British and American standards of play made it sound even more attractive. At the time American football was in its most popular ever period in Britain. Teams with names like the Milton Keynes Bucks, the Wolverhampton Outlaws, the Shepton Mallet Wombats and of course our very own favourites, the Birmingham Bulls, had sprung up all over the country. Rival leagues organised dozens if not hundreds of matches every Sunday, most of them laughably poor when compared to the transatlantic prototype. There were even several newspapers and magazines catering exclusively for fans of that one sport. Over the next few days it was to these publications that I turned for information on companies organising specialist Sports holidays to the United States. There were several and I sent for brochures from all of them and one night over a few beers in the pub Pete and I went through them to sort out exactly what we wanted to do and what we could afford. It never occurred to either of us that the first thing we should have done was to check for ABTA or ATOL bonding or something similar. They do say that you learn from your mistakes. Finally we settled on both a company and an itinerary that would take in a Dallas Cowboys home game and a the New York Jets at Miami. There would even be time to stay on and visit Disney World. What more could we want ? The next day I telephoned the company we had selected and made a provisional booking, sending a deposit by the next post. I received back a confirmation of the booking and a note that all our documents and tickets would be sent later, upon receipt of the balance. All this was of course months before our proposed journey and time passed until the balance was due which we then paid. After another short delay some tickets, the ones for the Dallas game, arrived. I telephoned to check on the others and was told that they would be sent soon. More time passed. At first neither of us was especially concerned about the delay in sending our documents but as the departure date came nearer I decided to contact the company directly and check on things. After a dozen or more calls I had managed only to speak to the secretary and hear from her of a 'Mr. Jones' who was, if she were to be believed, constantly in a meeting or out of the office or visiting a client or any one of the standard excuses that secretaries make for bosses who don't want to speak to you. We were due to fly out on a Wednesday. On the Monday immediately before, I decided that I was going to stay on the telephone until I got some information. I rang up and did my impersonation of a Rotweiler hanging on to a particularly juicy leg.
"I'm sorry, Mister Jones is in a meeting. If you leave your number I'll get him to call you as soon as he's free. " said the voice that I had come to know so well.
I pointed out that I had so far left my number on at least a dozen occasions and had yet to be called back by Mister Jones or anyone else.
"Mister Jones has been very busy, I'll see that he gets your message."
The conversation swung on in this vein for about fifteen minutes until I eventually managed, for the first time, to batter my way past the receptionist and to someone else. It wasn't Mister Jones, it was Mister Swan. Mister Swan informed me, without apologising, that I was worrying for nothing. When I pointed out that the departure date was not simply close but imminent and that by now I should actually be packing, he remained unruffled.
"There has been a small delay on getting your tickets but they will be waiting for you at the airport, the other Game tickets will be at your hotel in Miami. "
I decided that this wasn't good enough.
"Can you tell me which airline we'll be flying with ?" I asked, "So that I know which desk to go to to collect the tickets. "
After a suspicious hesitation he told me that we would be flying Virgin Airlines. I thanked him and hung up. Less than I minute later I was speaking to the Virgin desk clerk at Gatwick. Less than a minute after that I was speaking to his secretary again. This time I knew how to tackle her.
"Sorry to bother you again, " I said quietly and politely "But there was something I forgot to check with Mister Swan, could I speak to him again for a moment ?"
My friendly manner fooled her completely and a moment later he was back on the line.
"I have just been speaking to the Virgin Desk at Gatwick, " I said "Guess what they told me. "
After a pause when I could almost hear his brain changing gear he said
"Ah, if they said they have no tickets for you that's because they're standby tickets."
"Close, " I said "What they actually told me is that at this time of year Virgin don't operate a service to Dallas so it might prove rather difficult to catch it. "
There was another audible grinding of his mental gears, or it may have been a gnashing of his teeth, it was hard to tell by phone.
"I see, " he said "Then of course you can't be flying with them I must have made a mistake. I wonder how that could have happened. "
"So do I. " I agreed.
"Listen, " he said "Let me just consult my files and ring you back. I'll be no more than five minutes. "
That was when I made my mistake. I agreed. So far the telephone calls had taken the best part of the morning, thankfully amusing the others in the office enough to avoid the possibility of them sacking me. Now approaching twelve O'clock. I gave Mister Swan fifteen minutes before I rang back.
"I'm sorry, Mister Swan has gone to lunch. " said the anonymous receptionist. Normally I try not to get mad at telephonists, receptionists and secretaries, they are after all only doing their job. This calm attitude was beginning to wear rather threadbare.
"I realise, " I said "That you have been told to say that. I also realise that you are going to deny that and I realise that if you put me through to Mister Swan or Mister Jones you are likely to lose your job which you probably need. On the other hand right now I'm more bothered about my money and my holiday and I couldn't care less about your job. All the same because I'm reasonable I'm going to give you time to get some more instructions. I'll call back in ten more minutes and I expect to speak to someone other than you. "
Ten minutes to the second later I rang back and by a strange and freakish coincidence Mister Swan had just returned to the office.
"How kind of him to take a short lunch for me. " I said.
The sarcasm was wasted on the secretary who appeared to have the IQ of a telephone answering machine. Mister Swan hemmed and ahhhed and made a lot of extremely unconvincing noises and eventually admitted that they did use standby tickets but that on this occasion there wouldn’t be any and so our holiday was off. This was not exactly unexpected after the trouble I had had through the day but it was also not exactly welcome. When I asked him when, if ever, they had been intending to tell us he muttered something vague about 'before you set off'. I pointed out that only an hour ago he had been telling me to go all the way to Gatwick to pick up non-existent tickets for a non-existent flight. I didn't expect him to have an answer to that and I wasn't disappointed. Naturally, he assured me, we would receive a full refund. I had my doubts but there was nothing that I could do but accept and say that I expected it by the next post.
During all of this, and between the telephone calls to Virgin and the tour company, I had been ringing Pete to keep him posted with my progress. Now I made the final call with the news that both of us had come to feel was inevitable.
Next morning the post held no cheque. However on Wednesday morning, the morning we had been due to fly there was a letter. This too contained no cheque. What it did contain was a hand written letter of such staggering illiteracy and appalling calligraphy that anyone looking at it would have felt sure that it was written by someone with a minimal education but after amazing amount of strong drink. Thirty minutes of deciphering this barely legible scrawl, which wandered up and down the page in a fashion more reminiscent of a piece of modern art than a form of communication, and I had finally managed to transcribe it onto a fresh sheet. There then followed a feat of mental gymnastics while having worked out what all the words actually said I corrected the spelling to work out what they were supposed to say and then creatively interpreted the grammar to work out what they really meant. It was signed with something that seemed to be "R. Jones. "
The gist of the text, I decided, was a sort of apology; albeit mixed in with an undercurrent implying that we were somehow whining on about nothing when every one of their other customers was perfectly and completely happy. There was also an offer to either refund our money or to let us take an alternate holiday to see the Superbowl. I was on the phone within five minutes. It was no great surprise to find that neither Mister Jones nor Mister Swan was available. I explained very clearly that I thought Mister Jones letter was just about the worst piece of writing I had ever received and that nothing on Earth would persuade me to accept the offer to the Superbowl. Once again, I said, I would like a full refund by return of post. After the call I decided that this was probably not enough so I sat down and wrote a letter repeating the conversation point for point. At the post office I sent the letter recorded delivery. For good measure I also wrote it all down again and addressed this one to the magazine where I had seen the original advertisement in the hope of preventing some other poor sucker from having the same problems.
Strangely enough no cheque came. What did come was a phone call from Pete.
"How would you like to go to America anyway ?" he asked. At first I thought it was either some kind of sick joke or that the strain had finally broken him, but no he was both sane and serious. Disappointed by everything so far he had wandered into one of the high street travel agencies in Birmingham and asked what they could do at short notice. They couldn't fix up game tickets, although they could give us the name of an agent in America who might, but they could do us a reasonable deal on flights and hotels and let us sort the rest out when we got there. This would be in one week's time, flying on the Saturday just ten days after our original intended departure. Oh for the power of clairvoyance. Given a crystal ball, a good tarot pack or even a convincing Horoscope in the Sun I would have said forget it. Instead I said “Great, let's do it. "
We set off on the Saturday, still having received no cheques but leaving the chasing until we got home, and flew out of Heathrow to Miami, changing at Newark. The flight was remarkable only for being totally uneventful and we touched down at Newark slightly jet lagged but otherwise fine and started on through the immigration formalities. A wave of our visas and passports, plus the declarations filled in on the plane that we had none of the specified list of communicable diseases, and we were through immigration and on to customs. There were two customs desks, Pete headed for one and I went to the other. At mine a woman who looked like someone's mother was reading routine questions from a list and not listening to the routine answers. When my time came we got through the questions on reason for visit, was I carrying any proscribed substances and was I carrying any of the following list of items. Then she asked.
"Do you have any items of food or drink purchased on the aeroplane or at your point of departure. "
"Yes, " I answered innocently, "I think I've got some corned beef sandwiches left. " She stopped looking motherly and raised an eyebrow.
"In that case, " she said, hooking a thumb towards my bag, "We'd better take a look in there. "
