A consuming passion

We live in a 24/7 society now. We have 24hour news, 24hour television. I can go to the corner shop and buy milk and a Fry’s Peppermint Cream chocolate bar at 2am if I wanted to (Not at my corner shop, obv. I’d have to go to a city, but it’s an illustrative point so please let it stand). The freedom of information act allows us to view facts and figures about all manner of public institutions that were once off-limits and considered elite. If you were, God forbid, in the market to buy an electrical item, the internet would be able to list the prices at all of the major retailers and provide you with a litany of professional, and also slightly emo, reviews. The world is at our fingertips. Information is very easy to find. Twelve year olds are getting their Geography homework assignments written for them by enterprising adults in America for the cost of a few flumps and fruit salad chews.

Why then is it so f**k**g hard to sort out a trip to Norway?

Okay, so we’re travelling as a string quartet so we’re not making things easy for ourselves. But I fly regularly with my cello and apart from a few teething problems with the cello getting jammed in the x-ray machine, the annoyance of retired policeman who now work in airside security making what they feel are Seinfeld-worthy Grammy-winning quips about the size of my banjo, and the delays of strangers telling me about the niece/newphew/aunt’s past exploits learning the violin at school, things go okay.

Seriously, it’s like mobilising an army. There are flights to search out, which should be an easy process: visit a website, click a few buttons and ‘hey presto’ I’m smiling at a viking descendant as he checks my passport. Except Oslo has two airports, about 100km apart. Excuse me? Is Oslo 100km wide? I think not. It turns out Oslo’s second airport is, in all actuality, literally, really I’m not joking, quite a few towns away. A bit like London having an airport in Birmingham.

Then there’s the timing problem. A 4.30am check-in sounds okay, I can sleep on the plane. Except wait, some of us are coming from Bristol, or Birmingham so we need to factor that in and that means setting off at a slightly less sociable 2am. Then there’s finding somewhere to leave the cars where they won’t be featured on the BBC as an extra in either Watchdog or CrimeWatch. So now we don’t just want the cheapest flight, we want the most convenient one. Plus we need to fly back on Thursday, and be playing in Wales on Friday morning. But the only flights are late at night, then there’s collecting the cars and getting back to Bristol and trying to squeeze in a few hours sleep and a Little Chef fry-up.

It would be easier, and probably cheaper, to hire a Hercules cargo plane or Challenger tank to get around in Norway as well. What hirecar can fit a string quartet and suitcases in? These people who think His Tonyness just decided on a whim one morning to invade Iraq, and by lunchtime the same day we were kicking down doors in Basra need to try and plan a trip like this. We’re only four people and a few violins, an army, presumably, would need at least someone to type out a brief itinerary.

This is the problem these days, we have inventions to help with everything but those things we need help with. We have electric tin-openers, presumably for people whose wrists have no bone in whatsoever, or who are so unfit doctors have advised them to build up to that level of fitness. We have predictive text, so when you are constructing a text message you have to scroll down two dozen words to get to the one you want, when all you had were two letters left to add. We have spell-check which constantly chastises me for using made-up words, proper nouns, or for simply not being American.

All I want to do is travel to Norway on a Sunday, and come home again on a Thursday. I know the flights exist because there have been all manner of politicians and scientists on the telebox telling me I’m evil and that a small family of cute animals will be killed in South America if I book tickets for a flight. I hate myself for being annoyed. A few years ago it would take the average man a year’s salary to fly anywhere, yet now people can commute to work in North Europe, and here I am complaining that 3 flights a day for £4.99 simply isn’t good enough, and that they should put on a special flight just for me and my string playing friends.

The thing is I can’t help it. 24/7 society has made me like that. I shout and fist-shake at the computer if a webpage take more than 2 seconds to download, whereas a few years back dial-up could take 5 minutes just to connect to the World Wide Net. I think it’ll be okay though. I think I have the answer. There’s a small vessel that sails under the cover of darkness, and if I speak to the captain in French codewords we can take the slow-boat to Norway, no cute animals will be killed by CO2 and I will avoid being consumed by consumerism.