Oyster me up ...

Do I want an Oyster Card? No I bleedin well don't. It's what keeps South Londoners sane, and shows that Red Ken knows nothing about our needs, our wants or infact concerns. Four notes to travel on the tube!!!!! It's 10 pence in Spain, 15 pence in New York, free in Kazikstan. Oh well, seems like we'll all be walking loads come January.

It seems like no one leaves me comments any more. Blimey, I remember the days.

Anyway earlier this week, I stopped by to get a pizza. The place I stopped at i'd never been in before. It was a nice pizza place. It was clean, it had video games and, most importantly, it served pizza, which is essential for any good pizza place. If a pizza place doesn’t serve pizza, it's just a place. I ordered a specialty spicy pizza which, in this neck of the woods, spicy means they throw some jalapenos on it and they are about as spicy as my day old boxer shorts (which vary in their spiciness from day to day, admittedly) and some garlic bread, and I handed over my trusty debit card to pay for the circular Italian delicacy.

It was at this point that things became interesting. The credit card swiping machine was apparently having problems dialing into the great credit card processing deity in the sky, so the cashier continually swiped and swiped and swiped my card. And I started to sweat.

Here’s the deal: I’m very ... protective ... of my money, primarily because I have so little of it. I watch over my money like a dragon lording over its horde, except that, instead of a horde, I basically have a few quid and some change. So, when I hand over my debit card to a third-party swiper, there’s a considerable level of trust being exchanged. Eventually, my card swiped successfully, and I signed off on a £11.70 pizza bill. And it was a good pizza, although I’d hesitate to call it spicy. Generally speaking though, all was right with the world.

Well, the next day, I visited a hole in the wall and conducted a withdrawal. When the receipt was spat out, I noted, with recoiling horror, that I was basically broke, even though I knew that simply couldn’t be the case. As with most instances when I’m confronted with information that simply cannot be true, I consulted the Internet, which always tells me what I want to hear. I dialed into my secure banking on line thang and, to my additional horror, the Internet told me the same thing the cash point receipt told me.

Now frantic, I called my the 0845 bank number to see where all my precious money went. The cheerful voice (welsh!!!!) on the other end started reading off a list of my most recent transactions: Amazon £8.20, British Gas £25.90, Pizza Place £1,170.

WHAT?! How much?! I mean, it was good pizza, sure, but not ELEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS good!

I went on line and found and called the pizza place, and by immediately I mean I couldn’t dial the phone fast enough. Smoke curled up from my fingernails from the sheer friction of my frantic dialing. According to the pizza place, they only tallied £300 in credit card sales the day before, so whatever happened didn’t happen on their end. I was left with the dreadful thought that my £1,170 was possibly gone for good, lost in the credit card processing ether.

I called the bank again and explained the situation as it now stood, while also asking the cheerful voice on the other end (asian) if a £1,170 pizza bill really made any sense at all given the history of my previous transactions. She graciously admitted that it did seem rather peculiar. Thank you, cheerful voice. In the end, the processing error was rectified, and my £1,170 was transferred back into my account, and I collapsed onto the floor in relief.

But let this be a lesson to you: swipe once and only once, and if you see someone swiping your card more than once, tackle them and punch them in the groin.

That's what I'm going to do ...

My tune of the day: For your love - Stevie Wonder