Don’t get me wrong, I loved flying to Enniskillen to do two days of Comic Art Masterclasses this month. The kids were great, the venue fantastic, and my various places of accommodation were perfect.
But there’s one tiny aspect that made me nostalgic for the days of doing all my classes on Zoom - the costs.
Remember the good old days of the pandemic when no-one could travel anywhere, and if they did they certainly couldn’t work in a room with twenty or more kids for a couple of hours? Well, by July 2021, those days were gone and I have been back working in full classrooms, enjoying the laughter of kids again, for most days of the last two months. It’s been great. It’s seen me do more driving in the last month than I did in the whole of 2020, and then some, but it’s been worth it. These classes are a big part of my job. But sometimes I can let the costs run away with me, as I did with the planning of this week’s two day trip to Enniskillen.
To start with, the two day trip had originally been planned as a more ambitious four day trip, so I’d have been working with eight groups of kids, brought together from participating schools all over the area. This, effectively a week’s work, was naturally something I leaped at, and was all set to book the flights - my first flights since before the pandemic.
As we got nearer to the summer, as the costs of those flights were creeping up, it became clear that we were only going to be able to do two days of classes. Still well worth it I thought, so I booked my flights.
One thing I’d forgotten about flights is that, even at the most normal of times, they rarely go when you want them to. And in these post-pandemic adjustment times there are slightly fewer of them too. So the only way I could fly to Belfast International Airport in time to get to Monday morning classes in Enniskillen, and to get back again after the Tuesday afternoon class, was to fly on Sunday afternoon, and return Wednesday morning. Effectively I’m now taking four days to do two days work, and that’ll necessitate three overnight stays.
At least, I reckoned, I wouldn’t need to hire a car. I’ve got all of Sunday evening to get to Enniskillen (arriving in Belfast airport at 5.40), and all my classes are in the one art centre.
Then I look again at the bus timetables, that I may have given a cursory glance to before. There is no way I’ll get from Belfast airport to Enniskillen by public transport in a hurry (I won’t go into the details, but google it yourself and weep).
So I hired a car. A rather big expense when you leave it to the week before you travel (though, to be honest, I’d decided against booking a car when I booked my flights because, even by then, hire costs seemed to have doubled since pre-pandemic days).
And that was it, I thought. I have a return flight, I have a hire car, and I have three overnight stays - which were, by the way, the most reasonably priced and top quality bookings (whose quality I was about to appreciate all the more when I made the journey to schools in Waltham Forest a couple of days later).
Except, of course, I’d forgotten to book my airport parking. A rookie mistake, what can I say, it’s been literally 18 months since my last flights, I’d forgotten everything! So, another little cost added to the bill. Well, I say a ‘little’ cost…
Return flights £148
Enniskillen guest house 2 nights £128
Belfast airport hotel £54
Car hire £98
Airport parking £75
Total travel costs £503
I’m not telling you how much I got paid for my two days of classes, and I’m happy to reassure you that I have come away making a profit. But, let us just say, nothing near the profit I would have made had I just walked through to the back room on Monday morning, shouted at a screen for a few hours, and walked back out again, then repeated the next day!
I greatly enjoyed my trip to Enniskillen and look forward to doing more such journeys as my classes continue. I shall be planning my flights very carefully in future, and trying my best to add as much to the bill as I possibly can!
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