Originally Posted by Jamie Lawrence @ MuggleCast.com

“Jamie is a waste of space" fundraiser
A sudden revelation came over me today. I realised that I am a waste of space, and that I am useless.

Here's the story: Andrew, Samantha (one of our lovely editors) and I have been living the college student life at my university for the last few days. Today we were planning to go down to London and spend a few days there (and see Equus!). So, I book the tickets a few weeks in advance and they cost £20 each - a very good price for a 3.5 hour train ride! So it gets to this morning, and I'm sitting up late on the computer finishing my essay, and then I start to pack. The train leaves at 2:40pm, so we have loads of time. We get some food and relax. We get to the train station at 2:30pm - loads of time! I look at the Departures board, and there is no train at 2:40pm. That's fine, I think, it must just not be showing. So I get out the tickets and....

..I'd been reading the arrival time in London as the departure time from Durham. Yes, our train to to London left at 11:43am when I was still sitting in my boxers writing my essay. So, what do we do? I go and ask the ticket man if we can get the next train.

He says his words as if he has repeated them several times before. "No, you can only get the train on your ticket. A full single ticket will now be £95.".

OUCH!

So we scheme and ponder.. now, we at MuggleCast do not encourage delinquency or avoiding train fares, but in the end we decided we'd make up a story and attempt to dodge the full cost fare!

So we get on the train... the train man comes along... "Tickets please!'

"Hi Sir. We missed our train this morning. We phoned up the train company and they said we could get this later train as long as we didn't take up any seats." I give him the puppy dog eyes, but as I'm not a cute 17 year old girl, it doesn't fly.

"No, you have to pay the full price ticket. £112 each."

DOUBLE OUCH

So we have to pay. And thus, I am now £336 or $750 worse off. This has meant I am now broke, completely. Yes, I am an idiot. Yes, I am a waste of space. YES, I SHOULD BE KILLED AND BURIED IN THE DUSTBINS OF HISTORY. But I'm also broke, so I'm appealing to you all....

"But why should we give you money for your own stupid mistake?"

A valid question! Well, we'll give you something back. If we raise £275 or more, there will be two MuggleCasts per week for two weeks. Also; Andrew will film me eating 5 Big Macs. Even if I vomit uncontrollably, those Big Macs will be going down. He's only in the UK until Sunday, so please please be generous! :P It'll only take a couple of dollars each, and.. I'm sure once I realise how generous you all are there will be more free stuff we'll hand out.

In all seriousness though, the reason we need to make this up is because it has eaten into funds we need to do things like put on our Live London show and organise some great Book Seven plans. Plus, any money raised over the £275 will go to producing more and more live podcasts in the run up to Book Seven.

Thank you. :P The PayPal email is jamieisawasteofspace at gmail dot com! You can use the donation button below if you prefer. By the way, I am a serious waste of space.