Friday 2 June 2017

Why didn't I fly to Inverness?


As this blog post from the same time in 2015 attests, I have always been prone to falling into traps when it comes to booking my travel arrangements. With all the travelling I have been doing I fear I may have suffered a brain fade to make Donald Trump looks dangerously sane.

I'm gigging in Inverness tonight. I've gigged in Inverness loads of time. But my travel plans are totally mental and I have no idea why I've booked them this way.

I'm flying to Glasgow, hiring a car, then driving to Inverness. I'll get there just in time to do the gig ( a 90-minuter) then I have to drive to my hotel, which is a further 30 minutes drive, hotel prices having been prohibitively high in Inverness itself. Then the next morning I have a 4 hour drive to get back to Glasgow airport, then I fly home. 

That's a lot of travelling. From when I leave the house at 10.30 to prepare for my 12.30 flight, to when I get to my gig at, hopefully, 6.00, that's 7 and a half hours travelling. The next day it'll be about 8 hours.



Why didn't I fly to Inverness? I genuinely do not know what was going through my mind when I booked this flight to Glasgow. Could it be that I'd just booked the previous weekend's trip to Aberdeen, where there was no such direct option, and unthinkingly followed the same fly/drive pattern? I do not know. Looking at the Easyjet site it looks like (though it's far too late to change today's flights) if I were to fly next week I could get to Inverness - as I have done half a dozen times before! - for less than £100 return, inc bags.

As it is my flight to Glasgow is £175, my hire car is £45, my petrol will be £40, my parking is £30 and the cheapest hotel I could find was £55. By my reckoning that comes to £345. You will never guess how much I get paid for playing a 90 minute show at Eden Court in Inverness. Suffice it to say that, with the extra cost of the hotel breakfast that I've just spotted, this will not be the most profitable gig on the Socks Do Shakespeare 2017 tour.


Let's make it a good one, eh?


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