Shop peek

It took a while to get my act together, but I managed to sort myself out by noon. A quick bite toe at and a bit of lunchtime telly brought me up to 2.30, by which stage it was beginning to look murky and nasty outside and I began to develop blip anxiety. I needed to go in to town anyway, so wasted no further time and headed out the door.

First port of call was the Gaiety Theatre, where Opera Ireland are staging their Autumn season later this month. I booked tickets for Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, one for me, the other for one of my Music Group colleagues. I'd previously checked prices and availability on the web, but decided that it would be better to go to the theatre box office instead. Part of my thinking was to avoid the outlandish booking fees which are charged by ticket agencies, but when I sat down later for a late lunch I was disgusted to see a Handling Fee listed on the ticket receipt which amounted to 20% of the listed ticket price. I phoned Opera Ireland to query this, they said they'd had numerous complaints about this but that there was nothing they could do about it. They suggested that I contact them again if the theatre refused to give me a refund, and pointed out that online booking through their ticketing agent was only subject to a flat booking fee of ?1.50 per transaction.

The box office staff were far from helpful when I went back to complain, the front-desk girls called a more senior person to deal with me, he spun some yarn about the handling fee being built in to the ticket price rather than added on. I stuck to my guns, pointing out that the ticket price quoted on the web was ?35, whereas I'd been charged ?42, and that the difference was the same as the handling fee. With some reluctance, I got my refund and returned the tickets. I left feeling a bit chuffed, because I'm not usually good at complaining in circumstances such as this, but ...

... when I calmed down, I phoned the ticket agency and enquired about tickets for the night I'd already booked for. I was surprised and confused when I was told that there were no tickets available at ?35, and that the price for tickets in the section of the theatre I was interested in was indeed ?42! I explained what I'd already been through, and that's when the person in the ticket agency solved the mystery. The tickets I'd got earlier were for the Saturday night, and seats are more expensive at the weekend than during the week. So I hadn't been ripped off at all, I'd blown a gasket without cause, and I felt as if I had rather a lot of egg on my face. Embarrassed? Me? Dead right I was.

After all this excitement I went into the hideously ugly St Stephen's Green shopping centre for a few things. They've recently installed a fancy-looking staircase at one end of the main concourse. I used this rather than the escalator to access the higher floors, and when I got to the top landing I got this view of some of the kiosks which fill the centre of the ground floor. I felt a bit voyeuristic looking down onto the shoppers in this way, and decided this might just count as a 'different viewpoint' for the current assignment.

It was getting close to rush hour by this stage, it was already getting dark thanks to the time change, and I decided to hang around in town to allow the traffic to ease off before heading back home. It's always nice to while away an hour or so like this browsing in a book shop, so I decided to do that and to see while I was at it is I could finally track down that book. I did! I'm already halfway through the first of the 3-for-2 I got last week, but Mr Saramago's opus is now promoted to first in the queue when I've finished Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (which has proved to be a real find).