Cheap?

I'm in the airport. It's about midnight. I've got a long wait ahead of me before I check in and ultimately, fly.

I thought I'd indulge in a spot of blogging, or surfing, seeing as I've got so much time to kill, but unfortunately, airports being airports, the good ole net is prohibitively expensive, costing a rather steep 10p per minute. So a quid gets you 10 minutes.

This is probably about as much time as some people will waste on the internet in their lifetime, before they retire to organic yurt in the Forest of Dean, but I'm not one of them.

Nor however do I think I'm the kind of person who's going to shovel six quid into the coffers of 'Spectrum Interactive' (who curate this monetary black hole) for an hour's worth of webbery. And plus, the connection's really slow (twenty seconds to load Blogger) which makes something already expensive, blatant daylight robbery. At those kind of prices I want warp factor 10 connection.

There are a load of free sites you can visit, but without actually having ventured there, I expect they'll merely be gleaming nodes of consumerism, extolling the virtues of airport shopping.

So I was going to write a rather long winded bit of proey waffle about holidays I've really enjoyed in the past but instead I'll conclude with the following:

"Eat a dick Spectrum Interactive"

or

"Why didn't I think of it first?"

UPDATE:

After having gone and sat in an uncomfortable chair for a bit, I was eventually driven back when some people sat next to me and started talking loudly about 'integrated agencies'. I returned to the internet, and out of sheer boredom checked out the free bit of the internet service. It was just as I'd predicted. Lots of click through ads for various non-entity type companies. And you only got two and a half minutes at a time before the thing reset (remember: time is money) so to be subversive, I composed a letter by writing a letter in the 'question' field of various corporate website's comments sections, then sent it off to a range of people by copying and pasting it afresh. It cost me nothing, and killed some time, so all in all was an unqualified success.

This is costing me big time though..

Anyway, here's what a bunch of IT companies and Web Developers will be finding in their inboxes real soon. (Frustratingly, Loan and finance companies were only contactable by phone. Boo.)

Hi, whoever you are

I'm writing to you because I'm sat in a terminal in Gatwick Airport, waiting for to check in in a couple of hours.

It's two thirty right now, and I'm trying to find ways to fend off the spectre of excruciating boredom boredom which I suspect is, even now, hunting me down through spotlit corridors like a beast from the Doom series of first person shoot 'em ups (Do you know of them? ah, this a website, of course you do!

Anyway, the internet would be an ideal way to while away the hours, if the hourly rate charged by the incumbent internet cafe were not so eye gougingly prohibitive. (An ideal metaphorical nail gun to fend off the aforementioned spectre of boredom in this tortuos analogy).

In fact, in order for me to spend any time 'surfing the web' here, I'd have to sell that sizeable chunk of prime Tokyo real estate I simply do not posess, so you can see my problem.

Instead, I've opted to traipse through the 'free' section, which links to such catatonia inducing, mediocre corporate web presences as your own.

I presume you are, in some way, paying for this advertisement, which is unfortunate, as you only get a couple of minutes 'free time' anyway, and given that the loading speed on this portal moves at a pace which molluscs would snigger at (if they could) there's hardly any time to form an opinion of your no doubt excellent service, before you're sent crashing back out of cyberspace.

I've managed to get around these time constraints by typing in the 'Question' fields of comment forms, then copying and pasting the message as the time expires. Cunning eh? Also exceedingly wierd, granted but as my options are appreciably limited, by my not being heir to the Hilton millions (billions?) I hope you'll understand why I've chosen to contact you, the person responsible for checking the email of a mundane corporate web portal I couldn't give two solid farts about.

Anyway, all the best, and if it's Monday in your world, my commiserations. I'll probably be sat on a 'real beach' as my post modern 'e-message-in-a-bottle' washes up on the shores of your inbox. Fancy that eh?

Not that I'm gloating or anything, I'll be back where you're sat (so to speak) before too long.

All the best.

<0>

ps: A delicious irony about all this is that this proprietary browser won't actually let me view my blog as it's offensive. Ha!