Its Tuesday 27th December and having had a lovely
Christmas we head for Ireland and a two-centred holiday. Gatwick is eerily
quiet, as is the flight and Dublin airport. Apparently, according to the
Eurocar rental bus driver it was “bedlam in Dublin Airport the previous day”.
Peter, being the chatty person that he is, asks the driver so was the people
coming or going? Ah no says the driver, that was people leaving and arriving…
we put it down to a misunderstanding of accents, Peter’s that is.
Yet again we had another “little incident” with car hire.
This one did not involve hitting a wall or barrier in the airport but rather a
mistake in the booking. Himself takes on the task of booking the car hire
making this reservation back in October. Then a few weeks back after much
discussion lasting days – you know how it is when one of you will not make the
decision – we decide to upgrade and get a vehicle that we could use to
transport a TV unit + coffee table and other pieces of furniture between 188
and Carrigeen.
So on the morning of our flight on the 27th, I
turn to himself and say right have you got the upgraded documents for the car
hire, I’ll put them with the air tickets. Oh sure says he, let me get them. I don’t
need to make this into a tense Agatha Christie drama but many minutes later and
many comments such as “I definitely did the upgrade booking”, “they must be
here somewhere” it turns out that it had not happened. Thankfully Eurocar have
a car that we can upgrade to and off we head to 188 and a peaceful evening.
The main task of Wednesday 28th was for Peter to
get my Christmas present. The present is a Powercaddy what every high society
gal should not be without. After hours of research and viewing in the UK we’ve
narrowed it down to two and both American Golf and McGuirks have them in stock.
Both have showrooms about 10 minutes away so off we head on our shopping expedition.
We choose American Golf because that’s on the main road with
easy parking while McGuirks is situated within Dundrum shopping centre which is
the mecca shopping for South Dublin girls so much so the traffic jams regularly
featuring on the news. The sales person spots us immediately and is over to
help. The first decision appears to be whether I’d like an 18 or 36 hole
battery. After much chat about how it knows how long one takes to play 18 holes
I understand the concept of how the batteries work. And also the sales guy now
has an understanding of how my mind works and looks at Peter with sympathy.
The choice is between a Powercaddy FW7 at 759Euros or a shop
display caddy from Motocaddy with a lot less features at 430Euros. Features on
the FW7 include a calorie counter, why? And a feature that tells you how far
you’ve hit the ball. To be fair sometimes I can work that out for myself since
its only gone a yard. But still the FW7 is looking the favourite particularly
after himself says buy the one that will do you years, since you’ll not be
buying another for a while. What he really means is you are not getting another
from me!
The shop assistant at this stage senses the sale if he can
close it out. But we are still humming and hawing about it all. Peter says well
I am off to look around while you think about it – in other words can you not
make up your mind. So I do what any savvy shopper does and check the McGuirk website
to see how much they are selling it for. 629Euros no less!
Wondering back to the till the sharp sales guy is now in for
the kill by offering me the 36 hole battery for no extra charge. So I says to
him, well that’s not going to swing it for me as I’ll never play two rounds in one
day and in one fell swoop dismiss his strategy. To give him is due, he keeps
going and say well there could be some movement on the price creating an
opening an elephant could walk through and allowing me to say the winning
sentence “well McGuirks are selling this very powercaddy for 629Euros” to which
he says ok we’ll match that. 3 minutes later the Powercaddy is in the car boot.
And I think how lucky Peter is to be married to someone who negotiates
the price on her Christmas present.
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