I think it’s fair to say my wife wasn’t the biggest fan of Owlka. Not for what it is, but for the hours I have put into it. Night after night I have sat on the sofa next to her building it instead of being with her, and she did not understand why. Then a couple of days ago in the space of about half an hour she watched it turn a stressful day for our daughter into a delightful one. She does not hate it (quite so much) any more.
Our Saturday
My wife went to the gym on Saturday morning and came back with a plan. She had got talking to another mum, one from our daughter’s class, and they had decided to take the kids to Chessington World of Adventure the following day. For most parents that is an easy, casual yes. For the parent of a child with ADHD it is not. We’d be signing Sophie up for a whole day of standing in line and navigating crowds and just hoping it goes ok.
The one thing that makes that day bearable is the accessibility pass that lets you queue virtually. But that was sold out. So the excited initial yes turned into a real dilemma: go anyway and try to carry our daughter through a day that could fall apart, or pull out and let her miss the day with her friend. There was no easy answer. My wife was honestly torn.
At 21:44 I was on the sofa next to her and we were talking it through. I picked up my phone and asked Owlka whether it could watch the site and tell us if anyone cancelled and a pass became available again. It checked the Chessington site, confirmed that it could do that, but it would need her Access Card number.
Next time I got up (22:03) I took a quick picture of the card and uploaded it to Owlka. I typed nothing else. It read the details straight off the picture. A minute later it checked availability itself and confirmed what we already knew: the passes were genuinely gone for the next day.
By 22:05 it had set up a watcher on my Mac Mini, checking regularly and emailing both me and my wife if any passes became available.
I iterated the plan over four short messages between 22:06 and 22:10. I increased the check frequency to every minute (from every three), then asked Owlka to actually book it if any became available (don’t just alert me - take action).
Amazingly, at 22:15 a slot opened. It booked it, emailed me and my wife, and then shut down the (now unneeded) monitoring service. We were both amazed it had worked so quickly (we got lucky). I asked it to double-check, at 22:17, it re-queried and confirmed the booking existed on the park’s own system, not just in its own record of what it thought it had done.
Thirty-one minutes from asking to booked.
I did not go to a computer. If I had needed to, I would not have bothered that late, and our daughter would have spent the day in queues she struggles to cope with. It needed me on the sofa, sending four sentences and a photo of a pass. That is the whole of it.
A child who was anxious a few hours ago had a wonderful day. And the person who most doubted the hours I put into this now understands them.