The Whisperer

THERE are a fair few expats who have children of different ages at school in Bahrain and in boarding school in their home countries. The problem arises when they try to sort out vacations because the term dates rarely tally. Facing this dilemma, one family split the travel arrangements to fit; meaning one child travelled to the UK with his mother and made the return trip to Bahrain with his father. Try booking that online and you soon come unstuck. The KLM server, for example, cannot cope with a child travelling with one adult and returning with another, even if they are all closely related. Bonkers, of course, but the only way to book flights is to travel into the Manama office … and that will add another BD90 to the bill for not booking online. Cries of ‘but it wouldn’t let me’ fall on deaf ears. It’s going to be an expensive Christmas for some.