Yesterday saw My Good Self book a flight to the Land of Haggis (Scotland).

The Queen of Scotland has invited me over for a few days of strolling and imbibing.

When royalty comes knocking on the door, My Good Self feels obliged to respond.

Having recently singlehandedly saved the world from the carbon footprint on my last expedition abroad, I opted to go for the air route this time around.

Booking the flight turned out to be something of a challenging experience.

The Queen had recommended Glasgow Prestwick as the best airport to aim for. Ryanair the airline.

Logging on to the Ryanair website with the laptop, I made my way through the various hoops and proceeded to the final lap, the check out/payment page.

Only there were no payment options to select from. Problem. I hit the ‘Pay now’ button in the hopes of an online miracle.

No miracles available yesterday.

Out of the website, back in, same thing. No joy next time around either.

Plan B. The phone.

The one thing I don’t like when it comes to booking a flight by phone with Ryanair is that there does not appear to be a possibility to book special assistance on their phone website.

Anyhow, desperate means and all that jazz.

Again I proceed to the payment page. I happened upon an ‘expired credit card’ situation. There were two choices. Edit existing card or create a new one. My card just needed editing. Only there didn’t appear to be a slot for inputting the three ‘cvv’ security numbers when it came to the editing.

Edit not accepted.

On to option two, enter new card. All was going swimmingly until the ‘postcode’ box. Several years ago postcodes were introduced into Ireland for individual addresses.

They have yet to catch on.

This particular fact seems to have escaped the attention of the Ryanair Webmaster.

No postcode, no credit card, no flight.

Fortunately I had jotted down the postcode in some dusty old address book and so I finally got the flight sorted.

Not quite the end of the saga.

The special assistance.

Back onto the laptop with the booking reference in order to sort out the assistance.

Finally done.

Phew.