大象传媒

Hi
I'm back.
About train travel. I'm a convert even though we were held up between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I sat looking out of the window from when it was almost too dark to see to when it was almost light enough; frost on the trees and the weeds that only grow by railway lines, and very Christmassy too. There was a problem with the points. The 'customer services manager' aka the ticket clipper kept us well-informed with one of those wonderful soft Scottish accents I thought had disappeared everywhere except for black and white sixties tv programmes. A man across the aisle was grumbling into his mobile, saying he should have got the Virgin train. He may have had a point as it rattled past us. But we didn't wait long, and our customer services manager with the lovely voice was very apologetic. I had a booked seat, all the seats in my carriage were booked and there were squares of cardboard on the backs of every seat saying when they would be occupied. I wasn't actually sitting in my seat as I like to face the direction of travel but I wasn't due to have any company until we got to Newcastle. Then our customer services manager with the lovely voice collected them all and I gradually worked out we had become another train. My potential company would catch another train at the time we should have been in Newcastle, rather than waiting for us to get there. This made it rather confusing for passengers getting on, as they all thought they had booked seats, and they didn't. And then, disaster. There was a crew change at Newcastle and my wonderful customer services manager with the lovely voice disappeared. The replacement English crew were very friendly, but they stopped apologising for the delay (which actually was a bit of a relief) and now I didn't know when I would be getting to Peterborough. I asked one of the English officials and he worked it out counting on his fingers. I was wondering if he would lend me his mobile as I don't have one and he just gave it to me. Then he walked off, inducing a minor panic as I'm not mobile literate, but I successfully managed to dial out and re-arrange my lift. I had the phone for about 15 minutes but couldn't think of anyone else to call. Apart from helping me all the staff were very helpful to anyone else who asked, including an elderly lady who had her luggage loaded on and off for her, and the customer services manager with the lovely voice checked her connection on to March after the delay. So I'm awarding NXEC (National Express East Coast) 100% for customer service and won't mind travelling by train again. And the cost from Glasgow to Peterborough was about the same as half the cost of driving the van the same distance, although that only helps if there is transport from Peterborough.

As part of the relative round at Christmas we were spending 2 days with my brother and family, and most of my step-family. We only see them about once every two years now so there was a bit of catching up to do. (What do you call the new man in your step-mother's life? A step-step-father?) Then my brother dumped an enormous load of Brio wooden train track on the table (just half an hour before we were due to eat). I grew up with Brio, before graduating to Scalextric. Both required similar track building skills, but it was always harder keeping control of the Scalextric from other racers. Our mission was to use every single piece of track on the table and keep my two-year-old nephew from crying (he didn't want to share his battery train). My principal fellow track builders were my step-sister and her husband. My step-sister-in-law and neice were building the zoo and my poor step-mum was left to construct Newtown. We had to keep borrowing bits of Newtown to hold up the extended flyover sections of track. We let my nephew watch the trains for a bit until some more track appeared and we had to demolish Newtown. We were down to 2 track builders, hardly any houses left for Newtown, and very little table left to put more track on, but we managed. We were left with just one curve, and unless we put in a siding, which we thought would be cheating, we had accomplished our mission. The track filled up with two battery trains and an assortment of cars and it became apparent there was a flaw in our track as eventually all the trains got trapped on one loop. My step-sister and I contemplated a rebuild, my step-mum began to build a wall around Newtown, the nephew started to cry and dinner was announced. I suspect the nephew will get some interesting new sections of track before we renew our challenge at Christmas 2009. Meanwhile I am wondering why the fairer sex were more involved in the building. In my next life I am going to consider being a civil engineer.