tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69792668761136122422024-03-12T17:14:12.462-07:00Letters to First Great WesternUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger147125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-8828983032553405682012-03-22T03:37:00.001-07:002012-03-22T03:38:55.344-07:0022 March 2012. Letter 98<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Oh Mark. Ohhh, Sue.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This is the last time I will ever write to you. You have no idea how often I’ve wanted to write that! Here’s the thing: every time I’ve written to you, I’ve hoped it would be the last time. All I’ve wanted is for the trains to be on time, Mark! All I’ve ever asked is that you give me the service I’ve paid for!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">These nine months and 97 letters past – these 97 times I’ve been on trains of yours that have not run according to schedule since the end of June last year… implicit in each of them is the fervent wish that I wouldn’t have to write to you again.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I’ve written around 100,000 words of complaint to you, Mark. That’s quite a lot of complaining in nine months, isn’t it?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Well, lads: I’m not going to write to you again. Not, I hasten to add, because you have finally got your acts together and started to run First Great Western in the way that you have so often promised you would… but because I’m not going to be catching your trains any more. My daily commuting days are over. I’m back to freelancing again, and on the odd day a week or so that I will be in London, I’m going to catch the bus.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Sorry about the £480 a month I’ll no longer be giving you. I’m sure you’ll claw it back somehow. Another above-inflation price rise? That oughtta do the trick.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Will you miss me? Of course not! I’ve done my utmost to humiliate you through every medium I could think of: on the internet, in newspapers, on radio and on TV. These letters featured on Panorama! Panorama, dudes!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I should think you consider that £480 a month is a price well worth paying to be rid of me. And think of all the time you’ll have on your hands now! We’ve wasted over 24 hours of each other’s lives since June! Think of how much time you’ll have to concentrate on making the trains run on time now!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">After all: we shouldn’t forget why I started writing to you in the first place, should we?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I started writing to you in a blizzard of righteous fury and frustration, Mark. I didn’t start writing to you to entertain you, or make you smile, or even teach you a little about 80s pop lyrics – I wanted to waste your time, same as you waste mine. I wanted to embarrass you. I wanted you to realise that it wasn’t just me being uppity. I wanted you to see that, no matter how Sue and the rest of them spin it, all that nonsense about 90 per cent customer satisfaction ratings and the rest of it is just that: nonsense.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Where it matters, Mark, in the carriages every morning and evening, stuffed in and standing, herded and humiliated and subject to shocking levels of contempt and dismissed as mere human fodder by your company… right in there, where it matters most, the majority of your customers are not happy. Most of them are like me: seething, frustrated, sickened with the feeling that they’re being royally ripped off.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Most of them, of course, are considerably less childish and petty than me, and so most of them don’t write and tell you about it every day. Maybe they should.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Anyway. Rant over.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">As this is my last letter I also wanted to say thankyou, Mark. Not for your management of the trains, of course, but for the simple good manners and gentlemanly conduct you’ve shown in writing back to me every week. Often in the face of, it has to be said, some rather extreme and protracted mickey-taking.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I have enjoyed your replies, Mark. And I appreciate every one of them. Good manners are important. Being a gentleman is important.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Sue… well, I’d like to think you at least helped Mark with his replies to me. I’d like to think, as Director of Communications, you did at least a little communicating with your customers, if only by proxy. And, also Sue: you did give me a birthday card. It’s hard to be cross with someone who gives you a birthday card, isn’t it? So thankyou too Sue.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">And that’s your lot. No pop music references in this letter, no history lessons, no meteorology, astronomy or cobbled together bits of Shakespeare. And definitely no typewriting monkeys. This letter is just me saying goodbye (not “au revoir”) – and, hopefully, reminding you that there was a point to these things other than a bit of silliness.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Take it easy, Mark and Sue. Good luck with making First Great Western the kind of train franchise old Isambard Kingdom wouldn’t be ashamed to travel on. Seriously: good luck with that.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Goodbye, and good luck. And remember: not fare well but fare forward!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Dom</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">PS – Don’t cry too much. We never know what’s waiting round the bend, do we? The letters may be over now… but anything could happen next. Who knows: maybe even a book…</p><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_133241164889496" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-77773937407442544882012-03-21T03:58:00.001-07:002012-03-21T04:01:00.982-07:0020 March 2012. Letter 97<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438188"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381676"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381677"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381678"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381679"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381680"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381109" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438188"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381676"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381677"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381678"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381679"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381680"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438188"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381676"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381677"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381678"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381679"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381680"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 20/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: 22</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438196" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438188"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438196" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Word up Mark! Word to yo’ mama, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">How’s tricks? How’s treats? Told you tomorrow would come, didn’t I? We didn’t have to wait too long at all! Barely, what, 24 hours? About as long as it takes the world to turn once? A single dusk, a sole night and a solitary dawn? That’s about how long it’s taken for tomorrow to come.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And with it has come another delay, another chance for me to put (metaphorical) pen to (figurative) paper, to put (literal) finger to (actual) laptop and once again renew our acquaintance. The trains may still be up the swannee, but at least it means we get to talk again! Every cloud, Mark! The sun also rises, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So: what’s happened, Mark? What’s occurring, Sue? What’s with these trains of yours?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It seems that of late it’s been the evening service that has been letting the side down, eh? A seven minute delay on Monday and then on Tuesday, a… well, I don’t know yet how long it’s going to be. I’m writing this on Tuesday night, you see, on the train as the delay happens around me. I’m writing in real time! Exciting!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But I’m thinking it’s going to be a big one. A long one. A big long one, Sue! A meaty delay. A delay of substance. The ten minutes or so we spent dragging our heels around Taplow alerted me to that fact. We’ll have to wait and see just how late we do arrive into Oxford in the end… but right now it’s got all the hallmarks of a classic.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Plump up the cushions, Mark! Refill your favourite pipe, Sue! Stick Classic FM on the old radiogram, ring down for a good fresh pot of tea, bung the work experience kid a fiver from petty cash and tell him not to show his face again until he’s sourced some Hobnobs! Stoke up the fire, stock up on crumpets, make yourselves comfortable, Mark and Sue: because it looks like I’ve got a lot of your time to waste today.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ready? Sure? Okay… let’s go.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">First: a little colour.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. Picture the scene. I’m sitting on a train, typing away. It’s a train that has been appreciably slowing down since Slough, a train that is already running some 15 minutes late. It’s a train I ran to get, Mark. A train I had to leg it across all of London town to make.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">This 18.51 train, Sue: getting it means me leaving work at bang on six. It means trying to slip out on time before my editor notices I’m gone. It means distracting her somehow (“look! An elephant!”) and then, quick as you like while her back’s turned and her mouth’s agape, shrugging on the jacket, grabbing the bag, executing a faultless computer log-off manoeuvre, and ghosting out of the door and into the lift before she remembers the elephant trick from yesterday.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Some days, I don’t mind telling you, it’s harder than others (“look! A crocodile! Look! A marmoset! Look! A gnu!”). Some days, despite all manner of imaginary wildlife materialising in the office, it’s all I can do to get out of Fortress Wapping, charge through the tourists by Tower Hill, jump into the tube and emerge again at London’s Glorious London Paddington, Gateway to the West, in time to make that 18.51.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But tonight, I managed it. Just. (“Look! A great crested grebe!”) Tonight, I ran like billy-o, tossing aside tourists and daytrippers alike, hurdling commuters and kicking over prams and elbowing out the elderly and infirm and leapfrogging the pregnant so I could make this train.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And then what happened? And then we stopped. Around some godforsaken place called Taplow, we paused, and paused… and stopped.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And now I’m compelled to tell you all about it again. In numbing detail. Just so I can try to ruin your day in return. It’s a sick sort of Karma, is it not, Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. Anyway. Here we are. We’ve moved a little since I started writing. Let me fill you in.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What can I see out of my window just now? Reading. Lots of Reading. And I’ve been looking at it for long enough, I might add, to be able to study it in some detail. There in front of me, Sue, lies all Reading, spread out like some fabulous feast for the eyes, like some sumptuous city-sized* banquet for tired travellers to gaze hungrily upon and dream of what might have been, had we but time and proper train services enough.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Reading looks quite beautiful in the dark, Sue. When you can’t see it properly. When all the buildings are hidden and the lights make patterns in the streets and the skies, like yellow and white constellations. In the abstract like this, Reading looks quite beautiful.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh: I can also see a girl on the platform with the shortest skirt I’ve ever surreptitiously gazed at whilst pretending to look at Reading in my whole life. What a skirt, Mark! I own socks with more material than that skirt. It’s the kind of skirt that illustrates perfectly the paradoxical law which states that the shorter the skirt the more attention it commands. When it comes to skirts and attention, Sue: less is always more.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh, I’m going to miss this, Sue! Once I stop commuting, I mean. I’m going to miss gazing at “Reading” like this and making up paradoxical and sexist laws of women’s clothing for you! (The sexism is always ironic, of course, Sue. I’m not really sexist. Why am I not sexist? Cos the chicks hate sexists, right? They’re funny like that, are girls. Bless ‘em!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Enough flim-flam. The upshot is this: I’m on a train that’s running behind schedule and I’ve had to interrupt my game of Words With Friends with the deputy chief sub-editor of Esquire magazine (never play a Scrabble-based game against a deputy chief sub-editor, Sue, that’s my advice. Those guys know a lot of words. Even expert communicators like you could come unstuck against a deputy chief sub-editor), haul out my laptop, dig out my memory stick (not a euphemism) and once more think of original ways to express my displeasure with you both. At some considerable length.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Really, Mark. Honestly, Sue. How many times have we had to do this? (Well, 97 now, but you know what I mean.) For how long have we had to play this weary little game together? (Since the end of June last year, but, again, you know what I mean.) When will this madness stop? (Friday, but… see above.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The thing is, mes petites incompetents de trains, I’m not even angry any more with you both. After all these delays, all these wasted hours, all this lost opportunity and spent money and mornings texting my editor to apologise and evenings texting my loved ones to apologise and both mornings and evenings cursing you and your shambolic, contemptuous, highly-profitable company… after all this, I’m no longer angry. I’m disappointed.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s worse, isn’t it? When your parents say to you: Dominic – we’re not angry, we’re disappointed. That was always worse. That was always the line that got me thinking maybe I was wrong after all. (To be fair, I was very rarely wrong.) That was always the line that got me thinking: perhaps I better do better next time.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">How about you, Mark? Do you find the disappointment of your passengers more shame-inducing than their anger? If all of us who pay so handsomely for such pitiful performance were to stop shaking our metaphorical fists and instead start shaking our actual heads, would that be enough to give you pause? Would the sorrow of the masses do more than the anger of millions?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s got to be worth a try, right? (God knows nothing else is working.) Perhaps once I’ve finished writing these angry letters to you (end of this week, dudes! Friday!) people could instead start sending you pictures of themselves looking sad every time their train is delayed.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You could pin them up on a wall of shame; you could look at them every time you announce record profits, or put up prices, or trouser your inexplicably-justified performance-related bonuses. You could look at all those sad little faces and think: you know what? Perhaps we’re not doing so well, after all. Perhaps we could try putting the customer first for a change. Or at least giving them what they’ve paid for each day. Look at their sad little faces! We need to make them happy!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You could do that. Or you could pin them up on a wall of shame and laugh at all those sad little faces. You could maybe write “suckers!” across the top of the wall every time you announce record profits, or put up prices, or trouser your inexplicably-justified performance-related bonuses. You could think: hoopla! Thanks for all the cash, idiots!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Whaddayathink, Sue? Which sounds the more appealing to you?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh, hang on: the train manager has just come on the intercom. He’s trying to tell us something, Mark! We left Reading some time ago; we’re currently lolling aimlessly along the track near Didcot Parkway and he’s about to explain exactly why! Sshhh…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">He doesn’t know the reason why. He’s as mystified as the rest of us. He says he’s going to try to find out.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Still: great communication, eh Sue! If it’s a comfort to the miserable to have companions in their misery (and it is, Sue! It so is!) then he’s certainly made me a little more comfortable. Knowing that the people in charge of this train are just as in the dark as everyone else on the train has cheered me right up. We’re in it together!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What shall we do, as we wait to find out the reason for today’s delay? What would you like to know about? What subjects have I yet to cover, these nine months and 97 letters past?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What’s that? My socialist interpretation of Mary Poppins? Are you sure I haven’t done that already? Or was that my Marxist reading of Thomas the Tank Engine? Ah, yes. Okay then! In brief: a socialist interpretation of Mary Poppins…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Really? I’m not sure we have enough time. We’re moving again, Mark! We’ve cleared the cooling towers at Didcot, we’re maintaining a dignified pace towards Radley and beyond… soon, Sue, the favelas and shanty towns around the eastern perimeters of Oxford shall be in sight, and with them, the promise of home!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do we have time for my socialist interpretation of Mary Poppins? No. No, we don’t. Suffice to say she blows in on the east wind though, Mark. The east wind that blows straight from St Petersburg to the heart of the city of London! She blows in on the east wind to the household of a family called (wait for it) Banks. Banks, Sue. And before she leaves again she’s incited a riot (when young Michael chooses to give his money to a homeless woman rather than invest it in the City) and caused the Banks household to be invaded by an army of dancing chimneysweeps. After that… well, it writes itself.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But like I say – there’s no time. There’s no time, Mark! Oxford creeps into view (or it would do if it were not so dark outside – you know, what with us being 20-odd minutes behind schedule and all), the two pretty students in the seats opposite have nearly finished their bottle of wine and have stood up to adjust hemlines and straighten tights and strap on shoes and debate whether or not they should wear or carry jackets; Oxford creeps into view and the fat man in the seat in front of me has heaved himself upright and is blowing his nose (not such a pretty sight, if I’m being honest); Oxford creeps into view and I need to pack up my old kitbag and head home.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Twenty-two minutes: that was the final tally, Mark. Twenty-two minutes of my life tonight, wasted. Twenty-two minutes late, after all the effort I made to make the train in the first place.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But like I say: I’m not angry, Mark. I’m disappointed.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*Oh, except Reading’s still not a city, is it, Mark? I saw it on the news. They keep trying to make Reading a city – and the people who decide these things (who exactly are these people, these citymakers?) keep telling them Reading’s not quite a city yet after all. Who got it this time? It was someplace awful, wasn’t it? Chelmsford? Is that right? The mighty city of Chelmsford? That’s just taking the mick, isn’t it? Chelmsford!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438188"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv631136753yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv631136753Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133232480438196" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1332324804381165" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-14128452078981585182012-03-20T03:21:00.001-07:002012-03-20T03:23:43.200-07:0019 March 2012. Letter 96<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571184"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571185"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571186"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571187"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057194" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571184"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571185"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571186"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571187"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057194" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571184"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571185"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571186"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571187"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057194" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 19/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: seven</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! Wake up!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Wake up it’s a beautiful morning! See the sun shining for your eyes! Wake up, it’s so beautiful! For what could be the very last time!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Actually, don’t worry about that last bit. It’s not going to be the very last time, Mark. Fret not, Sue. There will be a tomorrow. There always is. That’s the problem with tomorrow – it just keeps coming. That’s the thing about tomorrow – that sucker just don’t know when to quit. Creeping in this petty pace from day to day till the last syllable of recorded time: that’s what tomorrow does alright.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But what am I saying? We’re not here to philosophomise! We have not come together on this beautiful morning in England in the spring to misquote Shakespeare and recall the lyrics of oddbod Britpop also-rans the Boo Radleys!*</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">These matters are of no consequence to men like us today (no offence Sue: men and women like us. Or rather men like us and women like you. Men like us and a woman like you. A letter-based ménage a trois. A train-related threesome. But not in a rude way, obviously). These things are mere distractions! We’re here, for what could be the very last time, to talk of trains!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s all about the First Great Western, baby, as Puff Daddy so presciently put it. And more specifically, it’s all about the First Great Western train I caught home from work last night that ended up running seven minutes later than it was supposed to.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s why I’m writing to you today! That’s the deal we’ve got going on! You waste seven minutes of my life on a Monday night – and so I write a letter designed to waste seven minutes of yours in return come Tuesday morning. That’s been our pact these nine months last, that’s been our story. And if it’s largely been a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing – well, what isn’t, eh? (Hey, that’s a pretty good line, isn’t it? Someone should use that. Someone should write that down and use it!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So! The trains. Oh, the trains, Mark! Sue: the trains! In this, our last week together before my work at the nation’s most popular super soaraway Sunday supplement is done and I once more ascend into the commute-free happy hunting grounds of freelancing – in this final week, here at the end of us, I was sort of hoping there would be no delays.<span> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(I’ve been hoping that every week for the two years I’ve been commuting, Mark. If the definition of madness is repeatedly doing the same thing again and again whilst expecting a different result, then I fear it may be time to call the doctor.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But of course that wasn’t to be. As sure as the sun rises in the morning and tomorrow follows tomorrow, there will be delays. It’s what you do, Mark! It’s what you are, Sue! And so, with that in mind, and despite the fact that I only have four more evening commutes and three more morning commutes before I quit this sorry business altogether, still, I shall not say goodbye, but merely au revoir.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I am fully confident there will be at least one more delay and one further letter to write before we snuff out this brief candle.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Until we see each other again, Mark! Catch you later, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*The Boo Radleys – now there was a strange band, Sue. Don’t you think? I always get them mixed up with fellow third-division Britpoppers Dodgy. Did I ever tell you how the drummer from Dodgy (fat bloke, pork pie hat – almost certainly not the only pork pie in his life, if you know what I mean) once tried to snog the current Mrs Dom? He totally did! And she, to her eternal credit, totally didn’t.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway, enough of that. The Boo Radleys: now there was a strange band. Named after a character in To Kill A Mockney Bird, by Harper Lee Beckham. All about a bloke who goes on trial falsely accused of murdering some posh type slumming it in Whitechapel in the 1820s. The whole thing is narrated by a little girl – and Boo Radley is the name of her father, who’s chief prosecutor. He hangs him in the end. Great story! I know it like the back of my hand! But strange band nonetheless. Though at least none of them ever tried to get off with my wife, to be fair.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133223811057188"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv2060052768yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv2060052768Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571113" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1332238110571181" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-39910524601031765292012-03-16T04:11:00.001-07:002012-03-16T04:14:16.673-07:00Mark: a man doing better, but still sorry. My kinda guy, in other words.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dear Dom<br /><br />Thank you for your emails. We have been doing a lot better recently but I am sorry for the delays on 8, 12, 13 and 15 March.<br /><br />On 8 March, a track fault was reported and trains had to follow a temporary speed restriction. Having to go more slowly led to the delay you encountered that evening. On 12 March a Network Rail vehicle knocked a signal out of its concrete footing and again, a temporary speed restriction was imposed. The signal was fixed overnight, but the speed restriction was still in place the following morning. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yesterday morning, a Level Crossing signal near Worcester failed. Network Rail technicians quickly discovered and replaced the defective relay that was causing the problem, but not before a significant number of our services were affected. I am sorry our 08:06 from Oxford was one of these.<br /><br />Thanks also for mentioning that you saw on the news that we have been converting some buffet cars into additional accommodation for our High Speed Trains. We are not removing any existing catering facilities - these are additional carriages which, once completely refurbished, will enable us to make those trains we currently run in 7 carriage formations up to 8, significantly increasing our capacity.<br /><br />We are continuing to work very hard on our punctuality and I really do hope that your last week of commuting with us will be uneventful.<br /><br />Thanks again for your emails.<br /><br />Yours sincerely<br /><br />Mark Hopwood<br />Managing Director</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-family:sans-serif;font-size:85%;"><br /></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-10318057141556501912012-03-15T03:45:00.001-07:002012-03-15T03:47:27.068-07:0015 March 2012. Letter 95<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963288"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963294" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963288"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963294" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963288"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963294" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 15/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: 13</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1331806889632113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963288"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1331806889632113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh the train runs slow through a humdrum town! This train will drag you down! Oh the train runs sloooww… Old Morrissey knew how to write ‘em, eh? Good old Stevie M! Stevie Morrissey and Laughing Boy Marr: they knew the score and no mistaking.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But wait! I get ahead of myself! I haven’t even said hello! Mark. Sue. Hello! How the devil are you both today? Pistons gleaming? Boilers brimming? Buffers all buffed up? Good! Great! Well done! Appearance is everything in this game. Not to do good, not to be good, but to look good – that’s the way I was brought up. That’s the key to success in this sorry life.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So, where were we? Ah yes. I was sitting on a delayed train (one of your delayed trains, Mark! One of those trains you promised would run on time when I shelled out so handsomely for a ticket!) and I was tossing Smiths lyrics into your lap. Frankly Mr Hopwood this position on Coach C that I hold – it gets me to Paddington but it corrodes my soul… I was happy in the carriage of a Cross Country express service, but this is a First Great Western train and heaven knows I’m miserable now… Why pamper life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(That last one wasn’t strictly about trains at all, but it is the greatest lyric in the whole of pop music history, so I figured what the hey. Allow me this one small indulgence. Sue will understand. Sometimes it’s just about the art of it all, isn’t it Sue? Sometimes it’s just about the beauty of the words we use, and not their relevance to anything we’re actually trying to say.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. I’m on a train in the morning trundling towards Didcot Parkway and we’re already way behind schedule. The train turned up late, Mark, it left Oxford late, Sue, and if it doesn’t eventually arrive into London Paddington late then my name’s Denis Bergkamp. How late will we be? I’ll let you know when we get there. When we get to the end. But my money’s on substantially so.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I tell you what though lads. I’m glad I finally got to quote some of old Mozza’s oeuvre at you! I’m pleased I managed to squeeze in the Mozzarella at the end, as it were. Now if I can only find a way to get a Half Man Half Biscuit lyric (second best band out of Liverpool after Echo & The Bunnymen, Sue: fact) into one of these letters I can retire from this whole shizzle a happy man.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(I know just the verse too: “Time flies by when you’re the driver of a train / speeding out to Trumpton with a cargo of cocaine / I get high when I’m the pilot of a plane / touching down in Camberwick I’m stoned out of my brain”… but I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever get to use it now. Such a shame. Such a waste, Sue!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’ve only got six days of commuting left, after today, Mark! A week and a day! I bet you can’t wait, right? I bet Sue’s knocked up a kind of impromptu Advent Calendar to count down the days. Did you put chocolates behind each door, Sue? I do hope so!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But I’ve been thinking. You know what I should do? Once I’ve stopped writing you letters, I mean. I should hand the baton on! (That’s a metaphorical baton, Mark.) I should pass on the responsibility for letting you know how much of your customers’ time you’re wasting to someone younger and more vigorous than myself.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Have you ever heard about the Dread Pirate Roberts, Mark? No? Let me tell you about the Dread Pirate Roberts. (Don’t worry, there’s a point to this.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Basically, back in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century, in what historians now call the Golden Age of Sail, when galleons crossed the Atlantic to the new world, the seas around the Spanish Main were terrorised by pirates – and the most terrifying pirate of all was the Dread Pirate Roberts. Tales of his skill and cunning and ruthlessness and cruelty were legion. His name struck fear into child and adult alike. None could face the Dread Pirate Roberts and not quake in their boots! His ship could not be sunk and he could not be killed! For fully 200 years he ruled the waves.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">How did he rule the waves for 200 years, Sue? By constantly reinventing himself! Every time he got too old, or too tired, or actually was killed, or his ship actually was sunk, a new Dread Pirate Roberts simply sprang up in his place. He passed the baton on. And so there was always a Dread Pirate Roberts – and so the legend of his immortality was created.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Good eh? Interestingly, back in the early 1990s, popular music duo The Pet Shop Boys mooted the idea of doing a similar thing. They were going to retire, and another two (younger) men – one moody keyboard-prodder, one sulky singer – would take over as the Pet Shop Boys 2.0. And a decade later they too would be succeeded by another two lads… and so on. And that way there would always be a Pet Shop Boys – from the mid 1980s to the end of recorded time (and recorded music).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Even more interestingly (and this is totally true, by the way) – do you know who they originally identified as the best candidates to take over from them? Can you guess who they wanted to become Pet Shop Boys version 2.0?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ant and Dec!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I know, Sue. No need to say it, Mark. Let’s just leave it there and wonder what might have been, eh?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So anyway: I’ve been thinking. Should I do the same? Should I make like the Pet Shop Boys nearly did? Should I follow the lead of the Dread Pirate Roberts? Should Dom writing to Mark and Sue become “Dom” writing to you both?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I could hold auditions, Sue! I could advertise for the position! What sort of person would I fancy passing my baton on to? I’d need an extensive interview process to find out! I’d need a casting couch!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ideally, I’m thinking it needs to be someone with honours degrees in astronomy, meteorology, classical studies, history, popular music and train management. Also someone with deep-seated emotional issues which can only be expressed through overuse of the exclamation mark. Also, I think it should be a girl. And most importantly, I think, a really fit girl.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Someone dead fit, who is nonetheless not too fussy about other people’s looks, and who is willing to do literally anything to get this gig. That’s the kind of person I want to get on my casting couch!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It could be like Britain’s Got Talent, Mark! It could be like the X Factor! I could take the successful hopefuls to Boot Camp! I could put the last 12 of them into the live finals and make them perform for me! Sit! Stand! Beg and roll over! Give me 1000 words on Napoleon Bonaparte’s role in the battle of Iwo Jima with reference to at least six indie classics from the 80s and a Happy Mondays lyric! Also, sit on delayed trains every day and feel your life slipping pointlessly away like the last dregs of dirty bathwater down the plughole. It’s 110 per cent yes from me!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What do you think? Or should I just go for Ant and Dec instead? Ant? Or Dec? The little cheeky one or the other feller?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You know what? I’m going to leave it up to you to decide. I’ll hold off calling either Ant or Dec until I hear from you. (It’s tricky: Ant is definitely the funnier of the two, but Dec does have that Masters in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Jesus College, Oxford, so, y’know…) And in the meantime, I’ll give any other promising candidates a good grilling myself…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh! Almost forgot! Today’s train – I promised you an update! We got to London Paddington 13 minutes late, in the end. We never did make up that time. In fact, we lost more time. Through the dank fog of a glorious English spring morning, we pootled and puttered eastwards, ever later, always more delayed. But what can you do? C’est la vie, Mark! C’est la guerre!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963248"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_133180688963288"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1087128620yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1087128620Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1331806889632113" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1331806889632163" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-77245768126989951332012-03-13T05:42:00.001-07:002012-03-13T05:44:28.801-07:0013 March 2012. Letter 94<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107988"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107994" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107988"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107994" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107988"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107994" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 13/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: seven</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_1331633211079115" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107988"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_1331633211079115" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What up, Mark? Sue: how you doin’?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I hope you’re doin’ good, Sue. I hope you’re doing real good. And also, that you’re well. You too, Mark! I hope you’re doing real good and doing real well also!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Look! We’ve reached number 94! And this despite the ongoing conversion of buffet cars into seating coaches in the ultra-hi-tech labs of Strathclyde or Kilmarnock or Balamory or wherever the dickens it was. We’ve reached letter number 94 in nine months of childishness and wasted literary effort! We’ve reached number 94 and by my calculations I’ve lost over a full day and night to your shoddy service – and in return, given you a fair old headache (and a primer in English history and basic meteorology) back.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">We’ve reached letter number 94 and for the most part we’re back where we started. Except that we’re all a little older, a little more beaten up and beaten down by life; we’re all a touch more jaded, a smidgen more knocked down and fitted up by existence; we’re all, in summary, significantly less good-looking than when we started. Even me!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But on the other hand… there’s that history stuff and that meteorology stuff and you’ve learned a few new pop lyrics, right? So, you know, every cloud...</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But enough lazy introspection! Enough of this self-examination! Let us cast our three gazes away from our navels and concentrate.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">One last push, Mark! One last effort to get it right, eh? That’s the spirit, lads! That’s the kind of vim that got us over the beaches at Gallipoli (one of the great triumphs of the Wars of the Roses, was Gallipoli, Mark. We sure showed Johnny Scot what English steel was at Gallipoli! And it led directly to the dawning of the Enlightenment! There would have been no Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello or the other one without Gallipoli!) – and that’s the kind of backbone that’s going to get us through this troublesome time with the trains!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Besides, Sue: how can a bunch of optimists such as us dwell on our all-too-obvious shortcomings when the sun’s shining so gloriously? (Admittedly, it’s not shining this morning… but it will, Sue! Oh, it will!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">How can three roister-doistering young roustabouts such as ourselves even entertain the idea that the world may not be a riot of wonderful colours when the skies outside are a riot of, well, wonderful blue? How can a trio of young turks such as us fail to be enticed by the brighter side of life when all around us the flowers are screaming their joy?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! It’s spring, dudes! Here comes the summer! In barely a fortnight it shall be April Fools Day and, as any high-ranking astronomer will tell you, it’s on April Fools Day that the planets of Uranus, Ursa Minor, The Big Dipper and Tatooine align each year and so herald the start of 100 days of glorious British sunshine.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(It’s true, Mark: I read it in Brian Cox’s Big Book of the Stars. Not Professor Brian Cox, obviously. The other Brian Cox. The actor one.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You know! Brian Cox! He was in X2: X-Men United (what a movie, Sue!) He played opposite Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the in-no-way-catering-for-the-homosexual-market Troy. He was the Trojan Horse: I think Agamemnon was his name (good boy, Agamemnon! Good horse! Have a sugar lump! Have a groom! Now, hold steady and let’s get this Greek army inside you. Woah there! Wooaaahh there Agamemnon!) That’s right! That Brian Cox! Much better than that other floppy haired fop. Proper, muscular astronomer is Brian Cox!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So yes! It’s the dawning of the age of Aquarius, meteorologically-speaking, and so I shall stay relentlessly optimistic from now on! I won’t, for example, dwell on my latest delay (and let’s be honest, the raison d’etre for this letter). I won’t, for example, expound upon the fact that<a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a> today we went all slow and stupid around Reading, trundled tiredly along towards Slough, fatally paused by Hayes and Harlington and limped into London Paddington seven minutes late.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I won’t tell you about any of that stuff!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sorry.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I feel embarrassed now, Sue. I feel I’ve spoiled the moment, Mark. I’ll go now. I’ll go quietly…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_23_133163321107988"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv920189192yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv920189192Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_23_1331633211079115" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_23_1331633211079165" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-19815858757356693582012-03-12T03:57:00.001-07:002012-03-12T03:59:22.748-07:0012 March 2012. Letter 93<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106688"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066160"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066161"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066162"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066163"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106694"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066179" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106688"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066160"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066161"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066162"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066163"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106694"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066179" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106688"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066160"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066161"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066162"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066163"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106694"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066179" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 12/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: seven</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066113"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><b> minutes</b>.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106688"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066113"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow! There’s a smell of sweet freshly cut grass in the air! All across the allotments, people dig and hoe and sow. The spring man springeth!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s lovely isn’t it, Sue? It gladdens the heart. And there’s more! There’s more to make the heart still gladder!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Guess what I saw, on Friday night, as I nodded off on the sofa, face down in my stir-fry and with the dregs of a bottle of Aldi Mediterranean Red staining the bowl of my glass? On the local news? Guess who I saw, straddling the local news like a Colossus, striding through a depot in Strathclyde? (Strathclyde? What on earth is a First Great Western depot doing in Strathclyde? Are there no depots a bit more local that would do? I’ve just about had enough of these Strathclydians, coming down here – or worse, demanding our trains be taken up there – stealing our jobs, taking our women, drinking our pints, fixing up our trains… who do they think they are, eh?)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dude! I saw you! I totally saw you, Mark! There you were, on my television screen, in my living room, in glorious talking technicolour! You were on Oxford Tonight, Mark (beamed from Strathclyde) – and the wonder of it shook me out of my soy-sauce-and-cheap-plonk stupor and sat me bolt upright!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(I couldn’t see you, Sue, but I assume you were there somewhere, just off camera, whispering instructions, giving direction, making sure everyone was sticking to the agreed spin… I assume you were there, Sue, like a less-angry Alastair Campbell to Mark’s less-crooked Tony Blair.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Well done, the both of you!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What were you talking about? Something to do with converting buffet cars to seating coaches? (That would explain the need to be in Strathclyde – they’re famed for their abilities to convert buffet cars to seating coaches up there. You just can’t get that kind of expertise anywhere south of Solihull.) Is that what it was?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Is that the big solution, Mark? Is that the easy fix to the problem of our collapsing rail network? It wasn’t about joined-up operator/infrastructure thinking, or proper investment, or upgrading, or not putting profits before service, or even admitting that the only people who have benefitted from the scandalous privatisation of the railways have been exactly the sort of people who would never dream of travelling less than first class in the first place?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It wasn’t any of that, after all!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It turns out all we had to do was haul our sorry stock up to Strathclyde, rip out all the coffee machines and little fridges full of triple-priced Mars Bars, bin all those little counter units and cupboards full of inedible sandwiches, bung in a bunch of seats, paper over the cracks, paint over the damp patch, stick a band-aid on the open wound, white up the sepulchre and Bob’s our uncle!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Brillo, Mark! Bazinga, Sue! To think the solution was there all along, situated between standard and first class, as they say, and available for hot and cold beverages, sandwiches and snacks! Or, er, not available for drinks and snacks any more!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’m only sorry I won’t be around to witness the wonder of it all. The irony, Mark! The Morrisette-churning irony of it all! Ten thousand buffet cars when all we needed was a seat!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It made my Friday night, Sue! As my head dropped back onto my chest and the last of the red wine dribbled into a sad puddle on my lap and bits of stir-fry fell between the cushions on the sofa and the current Mrs Utton snored softly beside me, I fell asleep on my sofa with a smile on my face.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You’ve finally done it, Mark! You’ve fixed the trains. Now we can sit! We may be hungry, but we can sit! No longer will our trains be delayed! No longer will they turn up late, and go slower than they should, and arrive late, and make us late for work and make us late to get home and so be responsible for getting us a roasting from our editors or a sorrowful sigh from the ones we love!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Because once the buffet cars are converted, they will ensure that… um, they will be directly responsible for… er, they will…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark? Sue? You know these buffet cars you’re converting? They will make the trains run on time, won’t they? They will ensure that, as well as more people being able to get the seat they paid for (by my calculations, about half the people standing, on some of the services I’ve had to endure), those people will also get the on-time train they paid for, right?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark. Sue. It’s lovely about the buffet cars, and splendid for the much-underemployed buffet-car-converters of Strathclyde… but one nagging question remains. Will the trains run on time now?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Ps – Oh, nearly forgot to mention. My train was delayed by seven minutes this morning. Those converted buffet cars can’t come soon enough, eh?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133154684106688"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1232714223yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1232714223Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331546841066113"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-87157440310519412152012-03-09T02:34:00.001-08:002012-03-09T02:36:14.767-08:008 March 2012. Letter 92<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371888"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718159"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718160"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718161"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718117"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718176" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371888"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718159"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718160"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718161"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718117"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718176" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371888"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718159"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718160"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718161"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718117"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718176" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 8/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: eight</b></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371896"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371888"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371896"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! Mark in the house! Sue in the house! Who’s in the house? Mark and Sue’s in the house! Everybody in the house of love! As noted Walthamstow vaudevillians East 17 so poetically put it: we’ve got to stop the pain and put the wars on hold, let the power of love inside the soul unfold! Everybody in the house of love! One love!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’m not going to argue with that, Mark! How could one raise an objection to such a noble sentiment, Sue? Outside it’s raining but inside it’s wet! (Or was that a different song? I get confused.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But never mind all that! East 17 may be reforming – and with a “new transatlantic rock sound” no less (the mind boggles, but it’s true, Sue: that’s a scoop, Mark. You’ll be reading about it soon enough – but remember where you read it first…) – but we’re not here to talk about East 17. The charmingly blunt lyricism of the band they once touted as rivals to Take That (seriously) are no concern of ours, this fine Friday morning.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">We’re here, while time and train schedules and the impending end to all things allows us, to talk of infinitely weightier matters than the power of love inside the soul. Unfolding or otherwise! We’re here, as we always are, to discuss train delays.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! We’ve got to stop the pain and put the delays on hold!*</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Guess what? I’ve been delayed again. Homewards bound last night, as the evening spread against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table**; on my way west as the lights twinkled on one-by-one through Southall and Twyford, as the pale moon glimmered over Maidenhead and Slough; heading home from another shift at the nation’s favourite Super Soaraway Sunday supplement; on my way home and stuffed into Coach C… I was delayed again.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What’s the latest word on this latest poor show, Mark and Sue? Ease my aching heart with explanations and excuses! Soothe my furrowed brow with details and descriptions! Unknit my knotted gut with your honeyed words of railway-related wisdom!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Was it congestion again? Another signalling issue? Was there a loss of power?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ooh, how I hate that congestion! (Though it still defeats me how a train track, upon which scheduled trains run at scheduled times, could ever get congested. From whence do these extra trains come, that cause such congestion?)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Gosh, how I loathe those signalling issues! (What exactly does “issues” mean in this context, by the way? What were the issues? If I were to say to my editor, for example, “I couldn’t write this feature due to issues,” she might perfectly reasonably respond with: “What are your issues?” And then I would have to explain just what it is that I meant in the first place. Instead of hiding my failings (I couldn’t be bothered writing the feature, I was smoking fags and messing about on facebook and chatting up the intern) behind woolly words like “issues”.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And as for those loss of power incidents… they’re the worst, aren’t they? Perfectly good, modern, up-to-date, well-maintained and properly-invested-in trains just losing power like that! I believe we explored the possibility of malign supernatural influences on the efficient running of First Great Western trains before – and largely dismissed the idea (it’s bad luck to believe in the supernatural, Mark) – but when I hear of sudden losses of power… well it seems to me that there might be something in the old hocus-pocus explanation after all.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Whatever the reason – and I pray it wasn’t the work of the Great Deceiver (that really would be a bummer) – the bottom line is that once again, for the ninety-second time in less than nine months in fact, you have not given me what I’m paying for.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh Mark! Oh Sue! When will we learn? How much more of my money must you take before we get it right? (Well, not that much more, as it happens – I’m quitting the commute in a fortnight, but still, bear with me, I’m on a roll here. I’ve got me gander up, as they say.) How many more trains need to be delayed before we wake up and smell the engine oil? And won’t somebody think of the children?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*Can one put delays on hold, Sue? Is that an oxymoron? Or a tautology? Or another of those fancy-named grammatical no-gos that top-notch communicators get so jittery about? About which they get so jittery? Oh heavens, I’m wrapping myself in all manner of English usage tangles here! I’ll be boldy splitting my infinitives in a minute! Enlighten me, Sue! Correct me! Correct my poor communications!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718170" style="font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718170" style="font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">**I can’t claim credit for that particular simile, Mark. That was T.S. Eliot. A man whose name spelled backwards is very nearly “toilets”, which still amuses me no end. (But if you think that’s good, you should try spelling philosopher Ed De Bono’s name backwards. Now that really is funny.) It’s the second and third lines from a poem about a man having a total mid-life breakdown. No idea why it appeals so much.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718181" style="font-size: 13px; "> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371848"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371888"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1847621050yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1847621050Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133128743371896"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1331287433718181" style="font-size: 13px; "><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-75565330735843289022012-03-08T04:45:00.007-08:002012-03-08T04:55:30.965-08:00A really REALLY long* reply from Mark!<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><span style="font-family:sans-serif;font-size:85%;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">*Only kidding - it's rather short, actually.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dear Dom<br /><br />Thank you for your email regarding the delay you experienced on Tuesday evening.<br /><br />This was due to a signalling issue and we had to re-route some services. Our 18:51 from Paddington was one of these and I apologise that this caused your late arrival at Oxford.<br /><br />Kind regards<br /><br />Mark Hopwood<br />Managing Director </span></div></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-5703855442215211692012-03-07T02:51:00.001-08:002012-03-07T02:53:50.409-08:006 March 2012. Letter 91<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688088"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688094" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688088"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688094" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688088"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688094" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 6/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: eight</b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1331115196880111" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b>.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688088"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1331115196880111" style="font-size: 13px; "></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Hey Mark! Heyyyy Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Sorry Sue, I spent an hour yesterday editing an interview with Henry Winkler. You know Henry Winkler, right? Old Winkler? Winkles? Winkolucci? The Winklemeister? That’s right! Henry Winkler! The Fonz! Heyyyy! It’s infectious is what it is! You can’t think of Fonzy without thinking: Heyyyy!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sue: Heyyyy! How’s it going, kids? Happy days? What’s new in the world of train management? Is it all still a blur? Is it making sense yet? Has it stopped making sense? Have you found your feet? Are you getting away with it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You are? Good! Great! Keep up the good work, groovers! Keep on rockin’ in the free world, as the noted model railway enthusiast and pop music iconoclast Neil Young so famously whined. Keep on train managin’ in the free world!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Enough enthusiasm. Enough with the exclamation marks already! Stop it with the screamers! Let’s pause.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Let’s – oh, sorry, we’re still pausing.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">[…PAUSE…]</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s better. Let’s all take a deep breath and clear our tiny minds and collect our thoughts and calm it all down. Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness. Slow and low – that is the tempo.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">We grow old, Mark and Sue (and our skin is cold): we can’t keep capering on in these letters like a bunch of over-hyped adolescents. We can’t keep prancing about the page like a gaggle of sugar-saturated toddlers. Our letters: they need to sober up and stop monkeying around.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">To business then! And enough with the monkey business!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Although that reminds me: permit me a small digression, Mark. Indulge me, Sue. That reminds me – once my commuting days are done (barely a fortnight hence!) I’m going to have to dispense with my three-dozen typewriting letter-monkeys. I’m going to have to find a home for my simian literary army. Those clever chimps I employ to write these things for me (write faster, little monkeys! Write harder! Write with more references to obscure pop songs!) – I’m going to have to retire them.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Poor little monkeys. Whatever shall become of them?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Don’t despair, Sue. Dry your eyes, Mark. I’ve found those apes a home. They’ll be going to University! They’ll be matriculating with another 999,964 monkeys come the end of March. And those million monkeys will be sat in a room (a big room) with a million typewriters and given a million years to come up with the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Just to see, once and for all, if it can be done.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Although, between you and me, I don’t give them much of a chance. After all: there have been billions of humans writing for a quarter of a million years and only one of us has ever managed to write the Complete Works of Shakespeare, right? And we’re still arguing over exactly which of us it really was.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sorry, what? Oh yes. To business! To business without all these exclamations!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark. Sue. I have been on a delayed train. I have suffered the hospitality of a First Great Western carriage and found it sadly wanting. Mine eyes have seen the shaming of the late coming of your locomotive. Last night I lost eight minutes of my life to the poor running of your service… and if I am older for it, I am not wiser, nor more experienced, but only more melancholy.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Or, to put it in less flowery terms (those monkeys are practising, Mark! They’re boning up on the old iambic pentameter!) – I got on this train after work, okay, and it went, like, slower than it should have? And we was delayed and stuff? And then I got home late and my missus was all like, you’re delayed and stuff? And I was all like, yeah, I know right? And she was all, bummer? And I was all, yeah, totally? And neither of us could concentrate properly on MTV Cribs after that.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(That’s how we talk in my house. Me and the old ball ‘n’ chain, the trouble ‘n’ strife, the current Mrs Dom – that’s how we communicate. We keep it real. We mean it, man.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ah, the English language, Sue! Does your heart not burst with the richness of it, every day as you sit in your Communications Command Pod at the First Great Western Secret Volcano Fortress just outside Slough, and prepare for a full day of communicating? Do you not think, as you activate the Ultra-High-Frequency Communications Extranet, as you log on and plug in and get ready to communicate the bejaysus out of the day…do you not think: ah, the English language! Such bliss it is to wield such etymological power!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I bet you do, Sue! I bet you think exactly that! I’m picturing it now (I have to picture it, as I haven’t got too much in the way of actual communicating from you to do anything but picture it) – and I don’t mind telling you: it’s a pretty pretty picture!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Go for it, Sue! Use the whole glorious alphabet! Employ every one of those 26 suckers to get your point across! Glory in the fact that no damn dirty ape is ever going to write Henry IV part II, even if billions of them type away for millions of years! Communicate the failings and the triumphs (mostly the failings) of First Great Western and show those monkeys who really rules the world! One nil to the homo sapiens!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oops. Got a bit carried away with the old exclamation marks again there, Mark. Sorry about that.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Where were we? Oh yes. I was telling you, in sober and serious terms, about my delay. I was delayed Mark. There was a delay. You owe me some of my life back. Eight minutes of my night, gone.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What’s that you say? Put it on the slate? Do I have a choice?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_133111519688088"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1152191524yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1152191524Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1331115196880111" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1331115196880164" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_1331115196880161"><br /></span></p></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-59731045949485425382012-03-05T07:11:00.002-08:002012-03-05T07:13:40.997-08:00A word from your Managing Director<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dear Dom<br /><br />Thank you for your emails. I am sorry for Wednesday's delay, the train ahead of yours, our 07:56 from Oxford, was suffering with loss of power and had to run slowly. You were therefore held up behind. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">On Friday our 08:06 service arrived into Paddington 8 minutes behind schedule due to a similar incident involving another late running service .<br /><br />Both incidents were disappointing and I apologise for your late arrival into London.<br /><br />Kind regards<br /><br />Mark Hopwood<br />Managing Director</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-82495065186370622592012-03-02T03:12:00.001-08:002012-03-02T03:14:28.620-08:002 March 2012. Letter 90<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div><span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 2/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: nine</b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! What’s up pussycats? What’s moving, groovers? What’s shakin’, Daddios?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Are you cool? Are we cool? Is everything feeling groovy?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I do hope so, Mark! Oh, Sue, let it be so! Let us still be cool; say we’re still groovy. Make it be the case that age has not withered us nor custom stifled our infinite variety of grooviness! I’d be gutted, Mark. I’d be sick as the proverbial, Sue.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What am I talking about? I have no idea! I’m almost delirious with tiredness today, Mark. I’m sitting on a train that would appear to be progressing London-wards far slower than it should do… and I’m tired. Oh boy, I’m tired. Oh Lordy, the troubles I’ve had! Oh Lordy, my troubles so hard!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(That reminds me of a funny anecdote. Would you like to hear a funny anecdote, Mark? Sue, you’ll like this one: it’s a funny anecdote about communication. What’s that? You would? Great!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So: that “Oh Lordy” stuff above – as you will of course have immediately picked up – is a reference to a song by shiny-headed techno oddbod Moby, as featured on his bazillion-selling 1999 album, Play. Which was famous, as I’m sure you’ll remember, for its extensive use of sampling of old blues tracks throughout.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Some, in fact, considered the album to be little more than a cut-and-paste job of pinched blues numbers with a bit of drum machine noodling chucked on top. I was not one of them, however. I actually thought it was rather clever. And I was right too: because back in 1999 when Play was released, I was the rock and pop editor of the Sunday Express and my word on all things musical was basically law and fact.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. As rock and pop editor of the Sunday Express and therefore middle England’s foremost authority on the racket that the kids called popular music back then, I sorted myself out with an interview with old Moby. A spread was duly cleared for the weekend’s paper, sub-editors were put on standby, a whole picture desk mobilised to make sure that the visuals did justice to the sparkling insights I would tease out of the cueball-noggined electro-doodler.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sue: it was the only interview I’ve ever done where my interview subject actually walked out on me.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Moby: he upped and offed! Right at the beginning too! And all because I made a joke! All I’d done was suggest that, rather than bother taking the time to actually talk to him, try to find something original in what he had to say and then sweat over my keyboard pushing out 1,500 words of sparkling new prose, I could take inspiration from his musical technique and simply nick the best bits of other people’s interviews, bosh them all together on the page and claim it as my own.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark, it was a joke! He was supposed to laugh!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Moby didn’t laugh, Mark. Moby didn’t think it very funny at all. Moby walked away and I never heard from Moby again. And my editor wasn’t best pleased either. We had a couple pages of the paper to fill last minute. I think we ran something on Atomic Kitten instead. Ah, those were the days!)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Sorry. Bit distracted there. What was I saying? Oh yes! Oh Lordy, the troubles I’ve had!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’m tired today, Mark and Sue! Je suis tres fatigue, meine petite bambini! I’m still recovering from Wednesday night’s press night – I didn’t get home until gone 11. Worse: I didn’t get home until gone 11 and I was sober. I hate it when that happens! I didn’t get home until gone 11, I was sober, we’d just lost at the footy to a bunch of tulip-fanciers and worst of all, Davy Jones of the Monkees had died.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! It’s Friday now and I’m still upset that Davy Jones has died.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">One thing you should know about me. After 90 letters, around 90,000 words and well over 24 hours of delays, one thing you should know above all else: I love the Monkees. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the Monkees? I love those Monkees! They were a Great Band (my caps). I’m not even joking. The Monkees? Most underrated band of the sixties.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Last Train to Clarksville? Cleverest Vietnam protest song you’ll ever hear. Full stop. And don’t even get me started on A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You. Proper genius. It’s so good I’m amazed Moby never sampled it, to be honest.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And most importantly of all: Davy Jones was a Mancunian – thus proving my theory that every single important band since the Beatles has basically come out of Manchester. (A theory that is so watertight that it even includes The Bee Gees and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ah, the Monkees, Sue. They’ve made millions happy, and now they’ve made me sad.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And so today, I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m sad. And like the old saying goes: fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. And nor is tired, sad and obsessed with ludicrous theories about Mancunian pop music makers.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But no matter! Chin up! It’s Friday! And we’ve reached our ninetieth letter! That leaves us with three weeks to make 100. Thirty journeys. Can you do it, Mark? Can you average better than one delay every three journeys?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Once more unto the beach! (As William the Conqueror said at the battle of Iwo Jima.) Let us raise our tired heads and steel ourselves for one last Herculean effort! To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield, Mark! It’s what Davy would have wanted!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div><span><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv858694846yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv858694846Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><div class="yiv858694846MsoNormal"><br /></div></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-88009146557881226572012-03-01T03:13:00.001-08:002012-03-01T03:13:54.215-08:00Stop! Hopwood time!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dear Dom<br /><br />Thank you for your email.<br /><br />I am of course very pleased you have not been significantly delayed in over a week. Yesterday morning one of our trains was held at Reading to wait for an ambulance to attend a passenger who had taken ill on board. The wait you experienced at Hayes was due to the congestion this incident created. I am so sorry your train was affected.<br /><br />Kind regards<br /><br />Mark Hopwood<br />Managing Director</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-39913281585646375312012-02-29T03:26:00.002-08:002012-02-29T03:29:49.728-08:0029 February 2012. Letter 89<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305088"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050159"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050160"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050161"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050117" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305088"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050159"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050160"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050161"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050117" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305088"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050159"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050160"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050161"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050117" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 29/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: seven</b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305096" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305088"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305096" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Well hello Mark! Sue! Fancy meeting you here! Come here often? Of course you do. You come here all the time. We all three of us do.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. It seems that perhaps that last week and a bit was a blip, after all. An anomaly, as our egg-headed friends in the science labs like to put it. The exception that proves the rule.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">As I write, squashed into a train made up of five carriages less than it should be (five carriages less than I paid for, five carriages less than you promised it would be when I did pay), I can’t help being just a little bit disappointed in you both. For a little while it looked so good back there! For a little while it looked like we’d really turned the corner (can trains turn corners?). For a little while it looked like we were going to grab this running a successful train franchise lark by the scruff of its neck and see if we could pioneer the bold and beautiful concept of giving the customers the service we promised!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">We could have been heroes, Mark! Just for one week (and a bit).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And instead… well, here we all are again. Still playing out this silly game of time-wasting tit-for-tat. It’s enough to make you give up hope, is it not?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! Don’t give up hope! The sun also rises! Let’s be positive! All this talk of going slow – it’s getting me down, my loves. Like a cat in a bag, waiting to dr—actually, let’s not go there. That’s no good at all. That’s not going to make us feel positive. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking of, quoting the Verve like that.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s the problem with Richard Ashcroft, isn’t it? He starts a perfectly sweet little song about his funny, furry, favourite pet cat, and before you know it, the poor little blighter’s been tied in a sack and taken to the canal. What’s wrong with him, Sue? What’s his problem with cats?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">He just can’t help himself, can he? The scruffy, crazy-eyed, lanky Lancastrian. He does it to himself: and that’s what really hurts.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">He wants to cheer up, that’s what mad Richard wants! He wants to write a positive, life-affirming, uplifting tune for a change! He should take a leaf out of S Club 7’s songbook, Mark! Reach for the stars! Climb every mountain higher! Ain’t no party like an S Club Party!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Remind me to drop him a note sometime, Sue. I’ll jot down a few lyric ideas and send them his way. I’m sure he’ll be grateful.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So, anyway. Let’s forget about Mr Ashcroft and his peculiar penchant for feline euthanasia. Let’s talk about nice stuff. Let’s talk, in fact, about me! After all, Mark: our days together may be numbered, and I want to make every moment precious.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What’s that? Yes! Our days may be numbered. The woods decay and fall, Sue. Even the most beautiful flowers in the forest are doomed to shed their petals, wilt and rot away. Even the prettiest kittens face the wrath of Ashcroft eventually.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Here’s the thing. As you know, I’ve been spending my days this last year or two writing and editing for the pleasure of millions of readers of the most read supplement of the most read English language newspaper in the world. (Technically for two of them: but when they shut down the first one, the Sunday one, I was lucky enough to move over to the other one, the daily one. Although that daily one now has a Sunday edition too, of course. I’ve been bounced around the weekends more than most, I don’t mind telling you, Sue.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’ve been covering maternity leave, you see: I’ve been stepping into the shoes vacated by the Features Director.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And now… well, she’s had the baby. (She had two babies, as it happens. Crazy!) And she’s coming back to work. What does that mean for us? That means I’m going freelance again, Mark. That means I’m going to be working mostly from home, writing for all and sundry and anyone with a discerning readership and a dirty dollar to offer.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That means I’m not going to be commuting every day. That means, in four weeks’ time, I’ll no longer be catching your godawful trains morning and night – nor paying the best part of five hundred nicker a month to do so.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I know, Mark! Sue: dry your eyes, mate. I know it’s hard to take but her mind has been made up. There’s plenty more fish in the sea. There’s plenty more annoyed commuters on your trains (I can see at least a couple dozen right now). Maybe one of them will prove to be as childish as me and start writing to you too?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Admittedly, they’re unlikely to have my exhaustive knowledge of pop music<a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a>, or profound understanding of weather patterns, or winning way with a historical analogy, but there you go. You can’t have everything. You want the moon on a stick, Sue!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But don’t worry! We’ve still got four weeks together! We’ve still got time to make it to 100 letters!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you think we will, Mark? Do you think we’ll make it to 100 delays in nine months? It’ll be a sprint finish, won’t it? It’ll be exactly like Coe vs Beckenbauer in the 1982 Olympics! Exciting!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305088"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv118974930yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv118974930Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_19_133051020305096" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_19_1330510203050149" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-32741991632100610612012-02-28T05:26:00.002-08:002012-02-29T03:30:14.360-08:0028 February 2012. Letter 88<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512388"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123245"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123246"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512394"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123280" style=" ;font-size:13px;">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512388"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123245"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123246"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512394"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123280" style=" ;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512388"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123245"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123246"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512394"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123280" style="font-size:13px;"><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 28/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 13</b></span></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123203"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512388"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123203"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;"></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Mark! Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Hey you! What’s new? How do you do?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">It’s been a long time, Mark. Sue: it’s been a long time since we rock ‘n’ rolled! It’s been a long time since we did the stroll! It’s been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time! Yes it has!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Old Bobby Plant knew the score, eh, Mark? Old Bobby Plant and his shaggy-haired adventurers in popular music: Swingin’ Bobby Plant and the Flyin’ Led Zeppelins (that was their original name, Sue: not a lot of people know that. That was what Plant and Page wanted to call the band. It took an intervention by John Bonham and the threat by John Paul Jones to set fire to Jimmy’s double-necked Telecaster before they relented and changed their name to the snappier Led Zep. Good old Led Zep!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Where was I? Oh yes! It’s been a long lonely old time! When did I last have to write, Mark? Was it a whole week ago? A week and a bit? Have you actually managed to make the trains run on time for a whole week and a bit? Unprecedented!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Give yourself a big hand, Mark! Take a moment to reflect on your achievement. Bask a while in the glorious sunlight of a job well done. Give yourself a big hand… and then pat yourself on the back with that big hand. Or if you can’t reach, get Sue to do it.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Sue? Stop communicating for just a second there and give Mark a pat would you? Ta ever so.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">So well done for that. I’ve had no cause to waste any of your time for 12 days. Silence truly is golden, eh?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">But then, like so much rain after sunshine, like the first frosts of winter after a glorious Indian summer, like the splitting head, broken fingers and inexplicable “intimate” itching that inevitably follows the heady carousing of a big night out in east Oxford (don’t ask, Sue, long story), the good times must inevitably be followed by the bad.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Nothing ever lasts for ever, Mark: and if a week and a bit without significant delays on the Oxford to London line seems like a good old run (and it is, Mark!) then, sadly, I’m here to tell you that today that run came to a stuttering, stumbling, stop.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">What happened today, Mark, as we waited motionless on the line near Hayes and Harlington? What befell the service, as we sat around twiddling our metaphorical thumbs and watching through the smeared and smudged windows of Coach C as life passed us by? (Or as close to life as things get in Hayes and Harlington.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Was it congestion again? Was it a signalling issue? A track problem? Did we miss our departure path?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Please don’t tell me it was anything to do with anything you, as Managing Director of First Great Western, might be responsible for! We don’t need that on top of everything else! We’ve got 99 problems, Mark! Don’t let that be one!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Because you are the Managing Director, at the end of the day. (And at the beginning of the day! And at the middle of the day! All day, as the Davies brothers so beautifully put it, and all of the night!) I’m only writing to you because you’re the Managing Director. Because the power and the responsibility lie on your broad shoulders. And yours alone.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">If you’re going to get Sue to give you a big pat on the back when you go a week and a bit without delays, if you’re going to glory in the sublime sound of silence that accompanies a week and a bit without a letter from me, if you’re going to take credit for the good things… then you’ve got to take the blame for the bad.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Because, good or bad, in sickness and in health, either way up it’s all about you. As Danny McFly and the Brothers McFly so beautifully sang, it’s all about you, baby.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Please don’t let me be misunderstood here, Mark. Much as I rail against your railway, much as I moan about your mouldy old service and despair of all the delays you put my way… I am not actually anti everything First Great Western stands for.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">I rather like travelling by train, as it happens. (When they run on time.) And as I think I’ve mentioned before, I have always found the vast majority of those who work for First Great Western to be friendly, helpful people. And when things go wrong – it’s not their fault, Mark. They’re just trying to do their jobs. They’re just trying to make the best of what is often a bad situation.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">And that’s why I don’t have a go at them. These letters, Mark – they’re not having a go at anyone but you. Oh: and Sue, obviously. The drivers, the guards, the conductors and train managers; the station staff and ticket collectors and trolley people; the repairmen and maintenance staff and engineers; the people in your official complaints department to whom I always cc these letters*; Jo on twitter… the whole extensive FGW extended family. I’m not having a go at them. I’ve never had a problem with them.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">It’s not their jobs to make the trains run on time, is it Mark? It’s their jobs to drive the trains, or repair the trains, or handle the admin, or serve up the cups of tea, or take the ear-bashing for other people’s incompetence.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">It’s your job to make the trains run on time. That’s what you get paid to do. That’s what I pay you to do. And so I reckon that makes you the only one to blame here. Everyone else is just trying to cope.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">The responsibility always lies at the top, right? That’s where the buck has got to end up. That’s where that buck has to stop.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Anyway. Well done on a week and a bit without delays, Mark. It may even be the first time that’s happened since last June (I can’t be bothered going back and checking, but do please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). And wasn’t it wonderful not hearing from me for a week and a bit? Sure, your days may have been a little less pop-music-lyric infused, but, y’know, at least they were quiet, right?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Hey! Here’s an idea! Let’s try to do it all again this week! And next! Let’s try to keep running trains on time – and that way I need never write to you again! Oh brave new world, etc…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;">*I’m imagining your Official Complaints Department is a pretty vast space, right? I’m picturing it right now – and I’m guessing it looks a bit like that scene in the Matrix where<a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a> we see all the people in their pods, stacked end on end, one on top of the other, in vast rows and dizzying columns… a city of pods, a megalopolis of pods, stretching beyond the horizon. The whole human species, stored in pods, to the end of recorded time! That’s what I think of when I think of your Official Complaints Department. Only with telephones. And without that big feller offering Keanu different coloured pills to change the world, obviously.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123297" style=" ;font-size:13px;"> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512348"><span id="yui_3_2_0_16_133042432512388"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1397004858yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1397004858Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123203"><span class="Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_16_1330424325123297" style=" ;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-67308997667748278492012-02-22T04:43:00.002-08:002012-02-22T04:46:10.446-08:00Mark Hopwood replies!Dear Dom<br /><br />Thank you for you for your emails the week before last and I am sorry for both delays.<br /><br />Our 08:06 on the Tuesday was delayed following a signalling issue which we are investigating with Network Rail.<br /><br />On the Thursday, our 18:51 left late after we had to undertake a further safety check and the delay was compounded by a signal problem near Slough.<br /><br />I am also disappointed that we caused you problems last week too.<br /><br />Our 18:51 on Monday was delayed by a failed Freight Train.<br /><br />The cancellation of our 08:06 on 15 February was very frustrating. Jo (and I agree she does do a fantastic job on Twitter) was right to explain that we did have a shortage within our HST fleet. We can usually cope well in these situations and draft in a replacement or a Turbo. It is vary rare that we have to cancel a service outright but I am sorry this was the case on Wednesday.<br /><br />Your return train was delayed in its way into Paddington by a track problem. It then lost its departure path. Although we are starting to see an improvement in our overall performance these last few weeks, services between Oxford and London have not been as reliable. We are working very hard to address this.<br /><br />Kind regards<br /><br />Mark Hopwood<br /><br />Managing DirectorUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-15245235881794444682012-02-16T03:41:00.001-08:002012-02-16T03:44:44.579-08:0015 February 2012. Letter 87<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270188"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701176"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701177"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701113" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270188"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701176"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701177"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270188"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701176"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701177"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701113" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 21.18 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 15/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 14</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270196" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270188"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270196" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! How do you do? Are you doing the do? Are you keeping on keeping on? Are you doing how you like and liking how you do? You are! Excellent! That’s the spirit, lads! Don’t let them grind you down, Sue! Always look on the bright side of life, Mark!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What’s that you say? How am I? Oh, I’m ok. You know how it is. I’m alright. Getting by. Mustn’t grumble. Can’t complain. Train was delayed again, but what can you do?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That reminds me, Mark: do you want to hear my theory of how geography relates to perceptions of wellbeing? (Admittedly it could use a snappier title.) You do! Great! I warn you, it’s not actually terribly interesting or anything, but I’ve got 14 minutes of yours to waste today, so tough luck.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So here it is. Here’s the thing: if you ask someone from the south of England how they are, and they’re basically fine, they’ll reply: I’m well, I’m good. It’s a positive thing, Mark: they’re communicating the positive in an unequivocal way.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ask someone from the north, however, and (assuming they are also basically fine) they’ll respond with: alright, you know. Mustn’t grumble. Can’t complain. It’s a positive expressed only in relation to the negative.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you follow, Mark? (Of course you follow, Sue: this is Communications 101, right? This is kindergarten Communications!) People from the north, Mark: in general terms at least, look on the positive aspects of their lives mostly in the context of how they’re not as bad as they could be. Things could be worse. Whereas southerners – well, they’re just blind optimists, right?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Okay, look, I told you it wasn’t very interesting. But it’s true. It’s literally true of every single northerner and every single southerner in the country, based on my extensive research of a couple of people I know.*</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway! I’m alright. Mustn’t grumble. Not so bad, as it happens. At least the zombie plague currently ravaging the sickened streets of Wapping hasn’t caught up with me yet. At least I’ve not succumbed to the office apocalypse currently laying waste to the features, pictures and lifestyle desks of the country’s most read magazine supplement. There is that.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">On the other hand, Mark: I am tired. Oh, I’m so tired, Sue! You should see me! Nodding off in the queue for my morning paper. Narcoleptic in my place on Platform 1. Near-comatose in my seat in Coach C. I’m not sick, but I’m sure tired. I’m all out of gas, Mark! I’m running on fumes, Sue! If it wasn’t for the caffeine and the nicotine and the sugar and the need to write to you about last night’s delay, I doubt I’d even last the journey in today.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’m tired, Mark. Last night was a late one. And last night’s late one was made still later thanks to another one of your trains running later than it should have. Fourteen minutes late, last night! Eighteen minutes in the morning and 14 minutes in the evening: that’s what you took from me yesterday!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Now, as we know, I’m no Charles Dickens when it comes to mathematics, I’m no Mario Balotelli when it comes to adding up and stuff, but even I know that 18 minutes plus 14 minutes makes over half an hour of delays. In one day.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s not really good enough, is it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The morning we already know about, of course, the existential cancelled train that wasn’t a train at all. So here’s what happened last night, Mark.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. Wednesday nights, as we know by now, are late nights for me. Wednesday nights are press nights, the nights we put the magazine to bed, the nights we mark up the proofs and sign off the pages and finalise the coverlines. Wednesday nights are the nights we get that bad girl off to the printers and start the presses rolling. And, as I believe we’ve also discussed before, for some reason, every week it seems to involve staying late to get it all done.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So last night I was late. Last night, upon a moonlit dreary, as I wandered weak and weary, across the concourse of Paddington station at just shy of quarter past nine, just in time to make the advertised and paid-for 21.18 to Oxford, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I was looking forward to getting home, Sue. I was looking forward to getting home as quickly and efficiently as possible. And do you know what happened next? Can you guess?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s right! We didn’t leave at 21.18! We left at half-past nine! And then pretty soon after that we slowed down a bit. We took it all at a gentle, leisurely pace. We ambled. We moseyed. We mooched home. We got into Oxford 14 minutes later than we should have. And now I’m having to write to tell you all about it, because if running trains late is what you do, then writing to annoy you as much as your late trains annoy me is what I do.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s… symbiotic, right? (“It’s… automatic! It’s hydromatic! It’s symbiotic! It’s Greased Lightning! Go greased lightning you’re burning up the quarter mile!”) We’re locked together, Sue! In an everlasting embrace of frustration, incompetence and futile revenge! It’s symbiotic!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Actually, you know what? That reminds me of something. There was a man yesterday, Mark, a man on Twitter. He suggested that if I’m so unhappy with the First Great Western train company then I should have a go at running it myself. He suggested I wouldn’t be very good at it (his exact phrase, I believe, was “could not run a Hornby”). His inference seemed to be that given that I’m not qualified to be Managing Director of a train company as important as First Great Western, I should shut up and accept the failings of those who are qualified and do run the company.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s a funny, servile, feudal kind of logic, isn’t it, Mark? It’s all a touch Downton Abbey and know-your-place and you’ll-die-in-the-class-you-were-born, is it not? It’s all a bit, well, naïve, no? Suggesting that those who pay for a service should be grateful for whatever they get, no matter how far removed it may be from what they were promised?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Was he being satirical, do you think, Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Let’s say, for example Sue, that you decided to treat Mark to a night out at one of Slough’s finest restaurants. Somewhere classy, something upmarket. Nando’s, say. It’s been a long, hard week of numerous delays and much high-level communicating and you both deserve an evening off.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So away to Nando’s you go: and once you’re comfortably settled in your seats, you decide to splash out and treat yourselves to a small bottle of lager and a plate of chicken each. Lovely!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Only in this Nando’s you have to pay up front. And then once you’ve paid, you’re told that, actually, your beer and chicken won’t be coming at all. But if you’re prepared to wait a while you can have a glass of warm water and a bread roll. It’ll be along sometime in the next hour or two. Maybe.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Now imagine that this terrible Nando’s experience wasn’t a one-off special occasion, but that you had to eat at that restaurant every day, twice a day, and the whole water-and-bread-roll incident isn’t unusual, but in fact happens roughly three times a week, every week. And you always have to pay up front. And the price keeps going up. And quite a lot of the time you have to stand. Next to the toilet. Which is overflowing.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What would your attitude be, Mark? You’d be cross, of course, and frustrated, and quite possibly feel like you’d been taken for an almighty ride by the Portuguese chicken-fanciers… but what would your attitude to the management of that Nando’s restaurant be? Would you think: well, I couldn’t run a Nando’s? Would you think: to be fair, <a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a>running a branch of Nando’s is probably quite complicated, and so perhaps I should be grateful for whatever bread rolls and warm water and cramped standing space by the overflowing bogs I get, despite the fact I’m actually paying for beer and chicken in a nice comfortable seat?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I doubt it, Mark. I doubt that man from Twitter would think that either. I think it far more likely that both of you (and you too, Sue!) would consider the whole thing a disgrace and feel that you had a perfect right to kick up an almighty stink about it all.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But then, what would I know? I’m just a tabloid journalist, right? I’m not qualified to run a train company!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh! Look at the time! Mark! Sue! We haven’t talked about Sean Penn and his unique take on colonialism and the commonwealth! We haven’t discussed how the ex-husband of Madonna and star of Bad Boys and Shanghai Surprise is uniquely placed to offer expert insight into the relative claims to ownership of the Falkland Islands!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Never mind! There’ll always be tomorrow, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">PS – For legal reasons I should point out that no branch of Nando’s would ever offer such a shoddy service. It would be almost literally unbelievable for anyone to offer such a thing, wouldn’t it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*I was brought up in the north, Mark. Does it show?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270188"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv66226755yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv66226755Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_20_132938674270196" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_20_1329386742701151" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-50068707338978261372012-02-15T04:14:00.001-08:002012-02-15T04:17:50.748-08:0015 February 2012. Letter 86<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205990"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059165"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059166"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205996" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205990"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059165"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059166"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205996" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205990"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059165"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059166"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205996" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 15/2/12. CANCELLED. Amount of my day wasted: 18</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059111" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205990"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059111" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ah, Mark! There you are!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sue? Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Sue? Anyone seen Sue? Anyone even heard Sue, recently? Anyone detected any sign of Sue, at all? Any indication that the Director of Communications for the almighty and all-powerful, the majestic and magnificent, the bold and beautiful First Great Western train company, keepers of the legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and custodians of the great pulsing pulmonary artery leading into London from the west, may be doing any communicating? At all? No?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh well. I’m sure there’s a very good reason for Sue’s uncharacteristic shyness. I’m sure there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for the Director of Communications’ current incommunicado status.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">In the meantime, Mark, let’s plough on! Let’s keep going and hope Sue catches up! Let’s leave a little trail of (metaphorical) breadcrumbs and hope she follows before the (still metaphorical) wicked woman of the woods tempts us into her (also metaphorical) house of sweets and gingerbread. Let’s hope those (metaphorical) birds don’t eat the crumbs before we’re trapped and locked up and fattened up ready for the (you guessed it – metaphorical) pot. Let’s – actually, I can’t remember what happens at the end. The children get eaten though, right? The children always get eaten, in the end. One way or another. It always ends badly (no metaphor there, Mark).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So, yes! Let’s skip along, Mark, you and I, like babes lost in the wood! Hand in hand through this mist and murk, together trying to see a way through the delays and cancellations and overcrowded carriages and defective toilets and lack of communication until we reach some kind of happy ending. Let’s hope we don’t get attacked by the Seven Dwarfs or pricked by a spindle or locked in a tower or mugged off by Rumpelstiltskin or whatever. Let’s hope none of that happens, because, frankly, I totally lost this metaphor about 150 words ago, and I’m struggling to think of an amusing way to work in Rip Van Winkle (just because it sounds a bit funny) and I’m failing.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So! Enough metaphorical mixology! Let’s concentrate on the matter in hand. Let us sit down, you and I, as the morning stretches across the sky… and discuss what on earth happened to my train to work today.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It disappeared, Mark! In a puff of metaphorical (sorry) smoke! Just like that! It wasn’t there! It ceased to be! It… oh, on second thoughts, let’s not quote Monty Python. I’m not sure it was funny first time around, was it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Here’s what happened to my train this morning, Mark. There was no train. The whole thing was a total existential poser! If the 08.06 from Oxford to London is cancelled, did it ever exist in the first place? Just because I caught the 08.06 train yesterday, just because it is advertised on the timetable as existing… if it never actually appears, then can it be said to have existed at all?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But wait! It gets better! I tweeted about it, Mark: I tweeted the lovely Jo, who (wo)mans your twitter feed, which is not a job I envy, seeing as it seems mostly to consist of taking the brunt of all the abuse that should rightly be aimed at the people running the train company, like the Managing Director for example, I tweeted the lovely Jo, who I like because she once commiserated with me when I didn’t get Stone Roses tickets that time, and she kindly tweeted me back with the reason the 08.06 from Oxford to London was cancelled.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The reason the train was cancelled this morning Mark was… (you’ll love this): there was a shortage of trains. In other words: the train didn’t come because there was no train!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Trust me, Sue (Sue! Finally! There you are! Welcome! Come in, pull up a chair! Mark and I are just pulling apart a philosophical Gordian knot! We’re just wrestling with a logical conundrum! There’s tea in the pot, Sue, do help yourself. Or shall I be mother? Milk, Sue? One lump or two? Biscuit? Gingerbread man?) – trust me, Sue, men of less robust intellects than ourselves would have their minds blown by such a concept.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">My train this morning was cancelled because there was no train. Stick that on an official looking bit of paper, Sue, add the word “discuss”, and you’ve got an Oxbridge entrance examination right there.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Except, when it comes down to it, perhaps the real question should be: are the philosophical and existential arguments that spring from the concept of a cancelled train that never existed in the first place really the most important thing here?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And the answer should be: no, believe it or not.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">In our heart of hearts, from the heart of our bottoms, we three know that the only thing that really matters if the 08.06 from Oxford to London is cancelled is that a lot of people are going to be late for work. A lot of people who paid a lot of money to catch that train are now going to have to wait for later trains, or sit on slower trains, or try to do clever things with different trains involving changing at Didcot Parkway… and none of them will be getting the service they paid for.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! I’m not getting the service I’m paying for! How many times, in how many different ways, do I have to say it? I’m not getting the service I’m paying for!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Je ne gettez-pas le service comme je payez-for! Mich nicht servicht-zie das ist ein kugelschreiber! Mi spendo, mi no servizio!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And, I’ll be honest with you, Sue: this morning was not a good morning to go cancelling trains. There are two reasons for this. And, because we’ve got plenty of time today, because I’m beholden to waste a big ol’ chunk of your time with this nonsense, just as you’ve wasted a big ol’ chunk of mine with your nonsense, I’m going to tell you about both reasons.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ready?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Go!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The first reason this morning was not a good morning to go cancelling trains is that, to be frank (can I be both mother and frank, Sue? Let’s find out!) I’m not feeling on top of the world, today. I’m not in my usual rude health. I’m no longer in the pink. There is a virus.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">There is a virus, Mark! The offices of the country’s most-read weekly magazine (free with your Super Soaraway every Saturday!) are infected! The sickness spreads like a, er, disease! No one is safe!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Have you seen that film Dawn of the Dead, Mark? It’s like that. It’s exactly like that!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It started in the far corner of the office a month or so ago, when one of the feature writers phoned in sick. She couldn’t stop being sick, Sue! Curled up on the bathroom floor and cold sweating by the sink. Gasping on the lino and shivering over the porcelain. She said it was horrible! She said it was the worst she’d ever had it!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Within days the other feature writer was off too. Same symptoms. Same sickness.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And then the picture director called in sick. And then it hit the entertainment assistant. Last week the lifestyle assistant phoned in with it… and yesterday the lifestyle editor succumbed.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s coming for us, Mark! The sickness! The zombie apocalypse! It started in the corner with the feature writer and it’s working its way in mean, nasty little zigzags, across the office floor, through the picture desk, the entertainment desk, the lifestyle desk… devouring all in its path, ravaging and wasting and showing no mercy!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And soon it will be coming for me!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">My desk, Mark! It’s the next one up from the lifestyle editor’s! I’m standing, as it were, at the doors of the shopping mall, baseball bat in hand, watching as the shuffling hordes of the undead beat a remorseless path towards me! For how long can I hold out, Sue? I already feel a bit peaky. I already feel a little uncertain around the old midriff. I’ve already got a bit of a shiver on.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Is it just the cheap wine (Aldi Mediterranean red of unspecified country and indeterminate grape, Mark. Kicks like a horse! Kicks like a big clumsy drunken Mediterranean horse!)? Is it merely the out-of-date pizza (Sainsbury’s Value range, Mark: and really, how out of date can pepperoni go?)? Is it simply the collywobbles, some psychosomatically-induced imaginary illness I have? Is it a phantom menace I feel? Or am I about to go under?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Am I to be the next victim of the office zombie plague?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I tell you what doesn’t help, Mark. Standing on a platform staring uselessly at the word “Cancelled” in the morning, trying to work out what the best way of getting to London and work and the source of the zombie infection, might be. That doesn’t help! That didn’t help me, this morning!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I got the chugger, in the end, Mark. The chuff-puff-huffer, the little engine that stops at every little hamlet and village and itty-bitty watering station on the way. I got to Paddington 18 minutes later than I should have. <span> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But that’s not all, Sue! There’s a second reason why this morning was not a good morning to cancel the 08.06 train from Oxford to London.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">This morning is the morning after the feast of St Valentine! <span> </span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And I don’t know about you two, but in my experience nobody feels especially good the morning after the feast of St Valentine. Whether you’re lucky or unlucky in love.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Let’s face it: either things went well last night and now you’re hungover and tired and aching and missing a shoe and have the beginnings of an unfortunate rash and are wearing the same clothes to work as you did yesterday… or else things went badly and you’re hungover and tired and aching and bitter that the only reason you’re any of those things is because you ended up drinking cheap Aldi Mediterranean red and crying into your Sainsbury’s Value pepperoni pizza by yourself all night.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Or, in one particularly extreme case, because you’re hungover and tired and aching and you’re the third-century Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus and you wake up with the terrible feeling you may have just ordered the patron saint of lovers to be beaten and then stoned and then beheaded.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The morning after the feast of St Valentine, Mark: not a good morning to cancel a train. Especially in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Even if the official reason for the train to be cancelled is that the train didn’t exist.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Still. Things could be worse, eh? We could live in the Falklands, couldn’t we? And then we wouldn’t even have the support of noted thespian Sean Penn! But that, I fear, is a story for another delay…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205948"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132930137205990"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv738104526yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv738104526Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059111" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><o:p id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329301372059175"><br /></o:p></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-33857002335960651142012-02-14T02:56:00.001-08:002012-02-14T02:58:35.239-08:0013 February 2012. Letter 85<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504590"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504596" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504590"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504596" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504590"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504596" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 13/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 10</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329213955045109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504590"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329213955045109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Darlings! Loveys! Sweeties! How are you? Are you loved up and buffed up and ready for action? Are you feeling amorous and looking glamorous and floating on the sweet winds of courtly love and train management? Do the stresses and strains and worries and relentless tallies of loss and failure simply wash over you today, like so much dirty rain off a honeymooning duck’s back?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I do hope so! I hope that’s exactly how things are today! I hope you’re feeling super! Because, my fellow riders on the love train (“all aboard the love train! Plenty of seats at the back! Passengers without a valid ticket for the whole of the journey on the love train will be charged for a full price single ticket! The love train would like to apologise for the late running of this service today! This was due to the late running of the earlier unrequited-love train. Misread signals were to blame”) – because, my fellow passengers on le train d’amour (as they say in Italy), today is the feast of St Valentine!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And, as I always am on remembrance days for third century Catholic martyrs – and there’s more of them than you might think – I’m in a good mood today, Mark! So good that I almost didn’t bother writing to you about the delay to my train home last night…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But not, on reflection, that good a mood. Be sensible, Dominic, I thought. If you let Mark and Sue off the hook this one time, just because a Catholic priest got beaten, and then stoned, and then beheaded 1800 years ago for trying to convert the Emperor Claudius Gothicus, then you’re going to be letting them off delays every other day of the week!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Steadfastness, that’s the thing, Sue! Fortitude! Shoulders squared, back straightened, jaw set! Chest out, legs akimbo! Big smiles! There’s no point in starting a project like this, in making a commitment like this, unless we’re all prepared to see it through. Even if it must mean writing to you on the feast of St Valentine.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I promised you I would write every time my train was delayed, Mark. I swore that I would waste as much time of yours as you waste of mine. And those kind of solemn vows should not be cast aside lightly. What substandard train management and childish revenge plans have joined, let no man split asunder! (No, nor woman, neither, Sue.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And so here I am, Sue. Just a boy, in the rain, saying my train was delayed last night again. By ten minutes again. I got home ten minutes late again. I missed the kids’ bedtime again. It’s all happening again and again and again.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Are you familiar with the concept of deja-vu, Mark? The word comes from the German, meaning, in the literal translation, “that weird thing that happens when, like, something happens? And you feel like it’s happened before? Yeah? I know! Freaky! And you’re all like: dude, this has totally happened before! And everyone else is all: nooo way dude! And you’re like, yes way! Totally way!” (The Germans are awfully good at coming up with words that manage to encompass a whole lot of other words, aren’t they, Sue? Excellent communicators, the Germans. Despite the whole sauerkraut and lederhosen and first-half-of-the-last-century military unpleasantness. We could learn a lot about communications from the Germans, Sue. Like how to shout, for a start.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Are you familiar with the concept of deja-vu, Mark? The word comes from the German, meaning, in the literal translation, “that weird thing that happens when, like, something happens? And you feel like it’s happened before? Yeah? I know! Freaky, dude! And you’re all like: dude, this has totally happened before! And everyone else is all: nooo way dude! And you’re like, yes way! Totally way!” (The Germans are awfully good at coming up with words that manage to encompass a whole lot of other words, aren’t they, Sue? Excellent communicators, the Germans. Despite the whole sauerkraut and lederhosen and first-half-of-the-last-century unpleasantness. We could learn a lot about communications from the Germans, Sue. Like how to shout, for a start.)*</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Well I keep thinking I have deja-vu, Mark, every time I get on one of your trains and it’s delayed and I’m late home and I miss my kids’ bedtimes. I keep thinking: I feel like I’ve been here before. Sometimes even on days other than those days commemorating the beating and then stoning and then beheading of third century Catholic priests.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And you know what, Mark? I wish it would stop. It’s beginning to wear me out a little, all this deja-vu. And today, of all days in the liturgical year, today, of all days in the Gregorian calendar, I can’t afford to be worn out. Today I need to keep my pecker up, Sue! Today is St Valentine’s Day!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You have no idea what I have to go through on St Valentine’s Day, Mark. You have no idea how draining this day is for a boy like me. I work in an office full of women, you see (much as I imagine the Operations Floor of the First Great Western Command and Control SuperHub to be – only with women instead of men. Okay, I didn’t explain that very well. Try this. Look around, Mark. See all those men? Well imagine they’re all women. And then see Sue? Imagine she’s me. That’s it! That’s what it’s like in my office! I’m Sue!)<a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a> – I work in an office full of chicks, and if it’s bad enough trying to fight them off for the other 365 days of the year (it’s a leap year remember!) then on St Valentine’s Day, it’s almost impossible.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Almost, Mark: but somehow I manage it. I dig deep, and I pull through.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Can you imagine battling through adversity to achieve something that seems impossible, Mark? Can you think of any aspect of your working life where a little effort and a wee bit of striving against the odds might be in order?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I look forward to hearing all about it!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*Worst deja-vu joke ever. Sorry. Worst deja-vu joke ever. Sorry.**</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">**I did it again. Sorry again.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504548"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132921395504590"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1135010864yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1135010864Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329213955045109" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1329213955045151" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-70560281450048558532012-02-10T03:22:00.000-08:002012-02-10T03:25:22.254-08:009 February 2012. Letter 84<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912088"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912094" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912088"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912094" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912088"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912094" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 9/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 10</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328869399120109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912088"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328869399120109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">‘Allo Mark! Salut, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">How are you this morning? Are you well? Are you warm? Are you keeping warm, Mark? Are you nicely wrapped up, Sue? I do hope so! Baby, it’s cold outside, as Tom Jones so creepily growled at Cerys Matthews, oh baby, it’s cold outside!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I told you it was going to get colder, didn’t I, Mark? I warned you to check my favourite badger-themed weather website for news of the impending snowstorm, for notice of the snowmaggedon, for the heads-up on the snowpocalypse. It’s a whiteout, Mark! The earth sleeps under this numb blanket! The green shoots of spring are bent and broken by this cold and suffocating tide of white! Rough winds do shake the darling buds of mid February!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">England lies frozen, Mark! All is caught in the freeze! Nothing moves!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But what’s this? Do my eyes play tricks on me? Across the still and silent hills, a single blue and gold speck slicing through the ice… a chuffing, puffing, huffing train! A brave little engine, Sue, carrying its passengers to work in the pallid morning light! My heart leaps!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I’m on that train, Mark! Oh proud train, Sue! On time, despite the snowaclysm! On schedule, despite the snowtastrophe! Well done!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Unfortunately, however, I’m on this train writing about last night’s train, which was not on time and not on schedule and did not do what it was supposed to. I’m on this train writing to you about last night’s train, which was delayed. And it wasn’t even snowing then! Poor show!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Here’s what happened last night, Mark. Here’s the facts. I got to Paddington on time, I got on the train on time, we left on time, we slowed down almost before we’d left the station, we went at walking pace all the way to the shining city of Slough, we left there late, we continued going slowly through the broken favelas and sordid shanty towns outside Reading, we left there late too, we suddenly found our legs around the ringing plains of windy Didcot Parkway, and we got into Oxford 11 minutes late.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s the facts. Just the facts, and some unnecessary adjectives (didn’t really need that “sordid shanty towns” line, did I, Sue? Broken favelas would have done just fine by itself. Still, too late now. But thanks for pointing it out!).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That’s what happened last night, on my delayed train. (It’s the facts, but it’s not everything that happened, naturally. I could tell you about all the incidental stuff too, stuff like how my iPod shuffle played six songs by the Pixies back to back, which has got to be some kind of chaos theory-proving record of some sort surely; or stuff like how I scored an 80-point, seven-letter word on Words With Friends on my phone (the word was “latents” in case you’re interested) and was immediately accused of cheating by my opponent, who is incidentally not my friend and just some random person from the internet who can’t handle being beaten at an online Scrabble-type game by the likes of me; or I could tell you stuff like how I only realised the girl next to me was actually extraordinarily beautiful once she got up to leave at Reading and perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned there about the relative values and merits of actually interacting with people in the real world instead of immersing yourself in your Pixies music collection and taunting random strangers from the internet whom you happen to be trouncing at online Scrabble-type games. I could tell you about all that stuff… but I won’t. I won’t bother. You wouldn’t be interested in that at all.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway, you know what, Mark? It’s too cold! It’s too cold to talk about that stuff! So let’s talk instead about how cold it is!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I hope you’re okay, in all this cold. Are you keeping toasty? Are you swaddling yourselves in jumpers and layering up your socks and pulling your hats down low over your ears and all the rest of the stuff you have to do because you can’t actually afford to turn the heating up? I hope so! The important thing in this weather, as the powers that be like to remind us, is to stay warm.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(The other important thing in this weather, of course, is to ensure that the energy companies continue to make mahoosive profits. Even if it means that the knock-on effect is that their customers can’t actually afford to use that energy to stay warm and instead have to take the official government advice to put on a couple extra cardigans rather than turn the boiler on. Quite right too! Profits must come before customers, Mark! That’s right, isn’t it! That’s how successful businesses work! The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many! Mr Spock at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was wrong! Daft old pointy-eared logician! This is the real world, Spock! Wake up and smell the budget coffee!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So: I hope you’re nice and snug, Mark and Sue. I hope you’re managing to heat the First Great Western Operational Command Centre adequately: those ballrooms and banqueting halls can get awful draughty, after all. Those parlours and promenades and palace gardens can take some warming up. Those towers and turrets and proud minarets are susceptible to a spot of frost damage. Stoke up the fires, Mark! Get another load of blankets in, Sue! Take them off the boys and girls in the customer complaints department if you need to!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh, Sue, look at the time! Count the words! We’ve nearly reached our limit for another day! And I’ve not even mentioned the England manager yet! Mark: I meant to write you a whole letter about the situation in the Football Association! It’s exciting, isn’t it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you fancy Harry for the job, Sue? Now he’s a proven and demonstrably innocent man? Is this to be a clean break from all those iffy foreign managers and the point where we show the world what a principled and upright band of sporting brothers we Englishmen can be? With a star player suspended for violent conduct, a captain facing racism charges and a new manager fresh from dodging Cell Block H? Why not just call Joey Barton up and make the full house?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But… like I say, Sue, we have no time for such matters. The clock has caught us again. Stay warm, Mark! Keep it muffled tight, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912048"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132886939912088"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv181062129yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv181062129Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328869399120109" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328869399120141" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-53407362938861674132012-02-07T02:54:00.000-08:002012-02-07T02:57:29.776-08:007 February 2012. Letter 83<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037791"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1328609640377116" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037791"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1328609640377116" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037791"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1328609640377116" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 7/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 10</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037799" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037791"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037799" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh, if you knew, Mark and Sue, then you’d know why I feel blue! Because of you – my Mark and Sue-oo-oo-ooh… well I love your trains, yes I love them Mark and Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Actually, and with apologies to Buddy Holly*, that’s not strictly true. I don’t love your trains, Mark. My feelings towards your trains, Sue… it’s not love exactly. It’s not even lust. We barely flirt. We’re hardly even at that meaningful-glances-across-the-dancefloor stage. Would I buy one of your trains a drink? No. I’d accept a drink from one of your trains of course, but that doesn’t say much. Would I try to get off with one of your trains, if I was really drunk and feeling vulnerable and suffering from particularly low self-esteem? Would I what? What on earth are you talking about, Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And yet, I need your trains, Mark. I need them more than want them (and I want them twice a day, every day). It’s a… dysfunctional relationship.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But let’s not start off on the wrong track! Let’s not get diverted into the sidings so soon! Let this letter be fast and smooth and efficient and comfortable and above all value for money! That’s what we’re about, Mark! That’s what we are! That’s what we do!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So! With that in mind I want to say thankyou for your latest reply. Thankyou, Mark! I love your letters! And this one was especially brilliant – you’ve totally hit form again. Because the thing is, Mark, much as I despair of your train company, and frustrating and infuriating though having to travel on your trains is, I maintain that you, on a personal level, seem a thoroughly decent chap. You do take the time to reply to my letters (sorry Sue, is this making you feel a little uncomfortable?) and I do believe that you are genuinely sorry that First Great Western would appear to be such a laughably inept company. And most of all, by taking the time to personally reply to me, you are showing yourself to be the bigger man of us three. (No offence, Sue.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But, you know what? It doesn’t really excuse the service you’re failing to provide, does it? I mean, just because you’re a decent bloke, it doesn’t excuse the fact that you’re still taking all this money off me and still wasting so much of my time every week.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Graham Taylor, Mark: remember him? He seemed like a decent enough man – but it didn’t stop me shouting “turnip head!” at the telly every time his England team put in another miserable performance. The buck has to stop somewhere, Mark. And this particular buck is parked up at your buffers.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Still. At least you were caught up in the delays yourself last week. That makes me feel a little better. In solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris, as they used to say in the forums of Ancient Rome and the libraries of old Vinopolis. It is a comfort to the miserable to have companions in their misery. It’s good to know that some nights you must be sitting on these awful trains yourself, cursing the fact that they’re not doing expressly what we’re all paying them to do.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you curse, Mark? Do you write angry letters? Do you fire off furious emails? To whom, Mark? Sue? The Government? The United Nations? Network Rail?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Ah, Network Rail! Not only the reason (according to you) that so many of your trains are failing to run on time, but also the reason you missed the Panorama report into the state of the British railways. Ooh, that Network Rail! Booooo to Network Rail! I hope you gave them merry hell, when you met them the other week, Mark! I hope you came out swinging! No retreat, Mark, no surrender!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I see even the Government is getting miffed with the big cheeses at Network Rail (I just spent 10 minutes trying to think of a train-related alternative to “cheeses” there that might work, Sue. And I couldn’t. Any suggestions? You’re the Communications Director, after all. The big engines at Network Rail? The big boilers? The big chuffing pistons?). I read in my Super Soaraway yesterday that, in a move that is clearly in no way political bandwagon-jumping or an attempt to mollify the masses without having to actually instigate any real change, in a move that in no way could be construed as tossing the electorate a bone while ensuring the rotten system itself stays firmly in place, certain politicians are calling for the bosses of Network Rail to forego their bonuses this year. Ooooh!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And then I read in my Super Soaraway this morning (as we dawdled along the line from Reading to London, as we crept through the frozen suburbs in the pale morning light 10 minutes behind schedule) that those same bosses have caved in and agreed not to take their bonuses! Crikey!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What do you think, Mark? Do you think they should have got their bonuses, on top of their salaries, in recognition of the outstanding work they’re doing? Would you take a bonus? Will you take a bonus?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I can’t wait to hear all about it! But as Buddy Holly said: that’ll be the day!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*I love Buddy Holly, Sue! Do you like Buddy Holly? He was, without doubt, the coolest cat who ever picked up a guitar and sang about his pet pig (true story: Peggy Sue is about his pet pig. It was originally called Piggy Sue). Great glasses, too. Buddy Holly, Sue: he was more important than Elvis, more important than the Beatles, more important than Led Zep. He was more important than great forgotten Madchester wunderkinds Northside, even. Because without Buddy Holly there wouldn’t have been any of those other bands. (Did you know that John Lennon named the Beatles after Buddy Holly’s band the Crickets?)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And he wasn’t just a musician, either. Before he learned those three chords and wrote a song about his pet pig, he was a respected academic. Buddy Holly: he was a bona fide genius, Mark. From Emiritus Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bespectacled pop sensation! From pioneering theoretical Relativist to Stratocaster-strumming chart-topper! They just don’t make ‘em like old Buddy Holly anymore, eh?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037749"><span id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037791"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1695915905yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1695915905Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_18_132860964037799" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_18_1328609640377154" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-85837456803468736802012-02-06T03:09:00.000-08:002012-02-06T03:11:43.595-08:00A lovely long reply from Mark!He doesn't want me to be cross. To be fair, I don't want to be cross either.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-size:100%;">Dom<br /><br />Thank you for your emails.<br /><br />The delay on Monday evening was down to congestion at Reading, created by an earlier dispatch issue.<br /><br />I didn't watch Panorama as I was working until late (I was with Network Rail in fact) but I am aware of the issues discussed throughout the programme. I know, and have my own opinions of, the operational challenges of the rail industry as a whole. I also have a good understanding of the publics general perception of how things are run. I take a keen interest in the contact I receive from our own customers and of course your own feedback has always been given my full and personal attention! So please don't be cross. It wasn't because I was disinterested but simply due to having a busy and 'hand's on' job that leaves little time for TV.<br /><br />On Tuesday, congestion caused your late arrival into Paddington. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">On Wednesday night, the problem was was first reported as a track defect on the 'down mainline' but turned out to be ballast on the line. The disruption was then compounded by a points failure on the 'down relief line'. With problems on both lines, delays were significant. I was caught up in this too and was late home myself. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">On Thursday, our 18:51 was waiting for a member of crew who had been delayed on a service that had been caught up in an points failure. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">I really am sorry for all the delays last week. I would also like to apologise for the occasions when our 08:06 has been a Turbo train. We've had a couple of our HSTs out of service and have had to make some changes. I know it is never ideal to short form trains, especially on busy commuter services, but our only alternative would have been to cancel services and this is not acceptable either.<br /><br />I think it is time to update you about what is being done to improve performance on the Oxford - London route. I'll be in touch with this soon.<br /><br />Kind regards<br /><br />Mark</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-14116041356245432312012-02-03T03:17:00.000-08:002012-02-03T03:20:09.284-08:002 February 2012. Letter 82<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985188"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851144"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851145"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985194" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985188"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851144"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851145"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985194" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985188"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851144"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851145"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985194" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 2/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 10</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985188"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851109" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Good morning, Mark! Good day to you, Sue! How are you both? Are you ok? Are you well? Are you good? Are you doing real good?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Splendid. Excellent. Keep it up!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">As for me: well, I’m a bit chilly. It’s brisk out, isn’t it? Brr! Minus thirty, that’s what they’re saying! Minus forty-five if you factor in the wind chill! Snow expected a foot deep by the weekend! Large areas to be cut off completely!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Thankfully for us, that’s the forecast for Finland, Mark… but nonetheless, here in Blighty it’s still a touch bracing. There’s a nip in the air! I fear for the blossom on the trees, Sue! I fret for the daffodil bulbs so bravely pushing their way out of the cracked and frozen earth! I weep for the early butterflies and the over-keen bumble-bees! Nature is cruel, Mark. Mother Nature: she’s proper hardcore.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Enough arborial ramblings! Let’s call time on these bucolic musings! We’re not here to talk country matters: we’re here to talk trains. Trains! Here’s to trains – the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems, as Homer Simpson once said. (It was either trains or beer, I can never remember which.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Guess what, Mark? Take a wild punt, Sue. That’s right! My train yesterday – it was delayed! Again! That’s every day this week, kids! Monday, Tuesday: had delays. Wednesday, Thursday: had delays. Friday… well, we’ll see won’t we? I’m on a train now, as I write this, on Friday morning. Let’s see if this once winds up delayed too. Or if my train home tonight also fails to make the advertised grade.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Let’s see if you can pull off the full house, Mark! Let’s see if you can score the Shanghai, Sue! A full week in which every day sees a delay. A full week in which you manage to mess up my day, every day. A full week of failure! The five-day jackpot! How exciting, Mark! I’m trembling with antici…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">…pation, Sue!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. My train home last night: it was delayed. It was late setting off from London Paddington – and it was late arriving in Oxford. Do you know why it was late setting off? There was an announcement (top communicating, Sue!). We were told, and you’ll love this, that the train was delayed while we waited for a late-running member of the train crew. He was late-running because… the train that was bringing him to our train was delayed!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What does “satire”, mean, Mark? What does “couldn’t make this nonsense up” mean, Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So: the upshot of all this bumbling and incompetence? We were late. I was late getting home. I missed the kids’ bedtime again. You wasted 10 minutes of my life last night, Mark, and so here I am again, writing to waste your time in return. And the beat goes on.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And you know what? I expect you’ve barely recovered from yesterday’s letter. I expect you’re still breathless at the sheer size of it, aren’t you Sue? Did you need a lie-down afterwards, Mark? Did you need a stiff drink?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">My editor, Mark (she likes a stiff drink herself) – she asked me an interesting question yesterday, after reading that long, long letter. (I don’t know why she wasn’t working at the time, but there you go: one rule for us and one for them, eh?) She asked me if I never got tired of writing to you: she wondered if I never felt like I was running out of things to say.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">As if, Mark! You know what it’s like, Sue! You and me – we’re communicators! We’ll never run out of things to say! We were born this way! It’s what we are, right Sue? It’s what we do!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">When did you realise that communicating was your destiny, Sue? I remember very clearly how I started communicating for a living. It’s a beautiful story. An inspiring story. Someone should set it to music. What happened was this: I got my first real laptop, bought it at the five and dime. I wrote on it till my fingers bled, Sue! That was the summer of ’89*.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And then… well, me and some guys from school: we had a magazine and we tried real hard. I remember that Jimmy quit, Jody got married – I should have known we’d never get far. But… oh Sue! When I look back now that summer seemed to last forever! And if I had the choice? I’d always want to be there. Those were the best days of my life!**</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Now, of course, people pay me to do it. Apart from you, obviously. You’re not paying me. I’m paying you. Now that’s ironic, isn’t it? On a purely daily basis, on a word-per-minute ratio, I’ve far and away written more words for you, Mark and Sue, than I have for anyone else. And nobody’s paid me to do it, like they pay me for all the other words I write. Worse: I’ve effectively had to pay you to do so.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Hmm. I need to think that one through. My pyrrhic victory might have just got a little more… pyrrhic.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Still: as old Dostoyevsky said – happiness writes white. It doesn’t show up on the page. (You remember old Dostoyevsky, don’t you Mark? Played on the left wing for Zenit St Petersburg back in the 80s? Electric pace. Questionable temperament. The sweetest left foot east of Check Point Charlie! Wrote a bit on the side, too. Fyodor! Fyodor! That’s what the crowds used to chant! His name is Fyodor and he’s the greatest Russian novelist and left-winger the world has ever seen! Fyodor Dostoyevsky! Do you remember that goal he scored against Tractor Volgograd to win the Russian cup? Do you remember that novel he wrote about that bloke who committed that crime and then got punished for it? Fyodor Dostoyevsky! What a player! What a guy!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Where was I? Oh yes: happiness writes white, Mark. It doesn’t show up on the page. Whereas your terrible, scandalous, ridiculous excuse for a train service, the one you’re making me pay £480 a month to use, the one with the above-inflation price rises every year, the one that has failed to deliver me to and from work on time for a single day this week… your train service, Mark, gives me plenty to write about. It’s all unhappy and it’s all showing up on the page, Sue! In black and white and read all over, baby!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*Technically, it was actually the summer of ’92, but that wouldn’t have worked half so well, would it?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">**Also, they weren’t really the best days of my life. Don’t get me wrong: they were alright days, they were a laugh and all… but the best days of my life? No. The best days of my life were between the ages of 0 and six. Now THAT was a good laugh.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985148"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132826471985188"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv367764008yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv367764008Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851109" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851141" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328264719851141" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-82169300294098583872012-02-02T05:18:00.000-08:002012-02-02T05:23:34.071-08:001 February 2012. Letter 81<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476688"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766155"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766156"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476694" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476688"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766155"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766156"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476694" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476688"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766155"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766156"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476694" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 21.20 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 1/2/12. Amount of my day wasted: 45</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766107" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476688"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766107" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark! Sue! Hey! Hey! You’re the Markee! People say you (and Sue) monkey around! But you’re too busy managing a failing train franchise to put anybody down!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Here you come, Mark: walking down the street. Waiting on the platform. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting on the platform. Waiting on that platform for what seems like forever sometimes, in the biting and bitter cold, shivering and shrivelling, frosting up and freezing over, chilled to the core, stamping your feet and blowing on your hands and staring uselessly, pointlessly, impotently at the electronic boards as they all say the same thing. Delayed. Delayed. Delayed.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Was that you last night, Mark? Was that you in Paddington station, in the icy cold and dark, at half-past nine on the first February evening of the year? No? Well it was me, Mark. It was me and a whole bunch of other people. And none of us were very happy about it either. Somebody had been monkeying around, Mark, and at half-past nine last night, as we stood and turned blue in the draughty concourse, nothing was moving in or out of Paddington station.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I was supposed to be home by 10.30 last night, Mark. (I’ll tell you why later, I’ve got plenty of time). I got home at 11.15. And that was your fault, Mark. As Managing Director of First Great Western, that was your fault.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I paid you a whole lot of money this month, Mark – nearly five hundred quid this month, Sue! – specifically and for the single purpose of getting me to work on time and getting me home on time. We had a deal! Here’s my five-ton, I said (under my breath, admittedly) as I punched in my numbers and shielded the screen from the rather iffy looking woman behind me (she was giving me funny looks, Sue! I think she might have been one of those identity thieves I’ve been reading so much about!), here’s my 500 nicker… now do your bit. I’ve kept my side of the bargain, I’ve even paid up front… now it’s your turn. Deliver on the promise.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And have you, Mark? Do you feel you’ve kept your side of the bargain? Do you feel you’re doing what I’m paying you to do? Do you really?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">You do realise that I haven’t experienced a day without a delay this week? But last night, Mark: last night was the worst in a while. Last night was a classic, of its kind.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So here’s what happened. It’s going to take some time in the telling, it’s going to mean me wasting a whole chunk of your day today, so you may want to prepare yourself before you begin. You may want to take precautions. Mark: send one of those management trainee kids out for a bucket of coffee and a barrel of Hobnobs. Sue: get on the First Great Western Communications Intranet and put out an APB: “The Director of Communications will not be available to communicate for the next 45 minutes. Do not be alarmed. Normal communications will resume afterwards.”</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark and Sue: pull up the comfortable armchairs. Stoke up the fire. Settle down, pull blankets over your legs and plump up cushions behind your heads. Fill your pipe, Mark. Replenish your snuff, Sue. Now does anybody need the toilet before we start? No? Are you sure? Because I don’t want to get going and then have to stop just because one of us needs to pay a visit to Mr or Madame Tinkle after all. Mark? Sue? Sure sure? Okay. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Wednesday nights are almost always late nights for me, Mark. Not for especially good reasons, not because Wednesday night is date night, or drinking night, or book club, or cinema club, or weather club (“Weather club?” I hear you ask, Sue. Sorry. No can tell. The first rule of weather club is you don’t talk about weather club. The second rule of weather club is no eating at your desk. The crumbs get everywhere!).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">No! Wednesday nights are almost always late nights for me, Sue, because Wednesday nights are press nights. On Wednesday nights at the magazine I currently work for (but only till April, Mark! After that, who knows! After that my contract is up and I’m once again available to the highest bidder! Got any work going, Sue? Got a vacancy for a freelance communicator? If you’ve got the readies, I’ve got the goodies! And goodness knows you need someone to start communicating!) – on Wednesday nights we put the edition to bed. We sign off the proofs and send off the pages and rewrite the headlines and renose the features and reread the credits. We design the cover, Sue, we think up the coverlines. It’s exciting! Roll the presses!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But it also takes a while. For some reason, every week, it means staying after hours in the office to get it all done. And so Wednesday nights are almost always late nights for me.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Last night, as it turned out, wasn’t so bad (work-wise I mean). Last night I made it away from my desk and out of the door and into the petrified Wapping air by 8.40. I legged it to the tube, I sat on the tube, I streaked under London and across London, East to West, I made it to Paddington station by quarter past nine. Off the tube! Up the escalator! Through the barriers! Down the tunnel! Up the stairs! Across the concourse! Glance up at the boards to check which platform the 21.20 to Oxford will be departing from tonight, and…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Well, we know this bit already, don’t we? This is where we came in. Delayed, it said. And so did the one next to it. And the one next to that. Delayed, delayed, delayed. Nothing was moving, Mark. Everything was stopped, Sue.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And so I waited. We all waited. I pulled my new red woolly hat over my frostbitten ears, I stuck my hands deeper into my pockets, I stamped my feet and I counted the seconds.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you remember counting seconds, Mark? As a boy, I mean, measuring thunderstorms? Counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder in order to work out how far away the storm is, in order to work out if it’s headed your way or not? Were you taught to count it in elephants? I was. One elephant, two elephants, three elephants. It’s got a lovely rhythm to it, don’t you think? I still count in elephants, when I count seconds.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And you know what I thought last night, as I counted elephants in the cold and no trains moved in or out of Paddington station? I thought: what I should do is send Mark and Sue a letter comprised exclusively and wholly of counting in elephants. That would make my point wonderfully, I thought. After all: a five minute delay (for example) might not sound that impressive in itself – but a letter which contained nothing but the words “ONE ELEPHANT, TWO ELEPHANTS, THREE ELEPHANTS” written down 300 times would make the point pretty effectively.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">A 10 minute delay? Six hundred elephants, Sue! That’s a whole bunch of elephants! Twenty minutes? One thousand two hundred elephants!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And a 45 minute delay? Mark, Sue: a 45 minute delay would be 2,700 elephants.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Can you imagine receiving a letter in which someone had just written “ONE ELEPHANT, TWO ELEPHANTS, THREE ELEPHANTS” two thousand seven hundred times? Because that’s what a 45 minute delay feels like, Mark, when you’re experiencing it. It feels like someone shouting “ONE ELEPHANT, TWO ELEPHANTS, THREE ELEPHANTS” in your ear, incessantly, for that whole thre quarters of an hour – all the way up until he reaches 2,700 elephants.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Are there even that many elephants left in the world? I can think of a couple in Twycross Zoo, another in Knowsley Safari Park, those three from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, seven or eight in the Jungle Book, there’s Babar the Elephant… but after that I’m struggling.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Forty-five minutes, Mark: a delay that is proportionally greater than the entire elephant population of the world (probably).</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So, anyway. That’s what I was thinking, as I stood<a name="_GoBack" style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important; "></a> with numbing fingers and dropping-off toes, staring forlornly at the litany of failure that constituted the First Great Western service from London Paddington at 9.30 last night.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I thought about elephants, Mark, and then I thought of lots of words that my mother wouldn’t approve of. The kinds of words that I’m sure, as a lady Sue, you rarely, if ever, are exposed to. Salty language, as they say. Language to make a docker blush. The talk of rough taverns and mess halls. Words with four letters, and sometimes five letters and even, in one particularly salty, messy instance, 12 letters. (Think about it, Mark. Listening to a Public Enemy album may help if you get really stuck.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I thought about these fruity words and I thought about why I never use any of them in my letters to you. God knows I’d like to, Mark. Heaven knows they’d express the forcefulness of the points I’m trying to make. So why not? Why, as Joe Pesci might say, the [expletive redacted] not?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Well, I’ll tell you (since you asked). Quite apart from the fact that I learned my trade on a tabloid newspaper, where we were taught that a good writer need never recourse to bad language to make his point, I was also taught (by my mother in this instance) that the moment you start swearing in an argument, you lose your moral high ground.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And this is all about moral high ground, Mark! Isn’t it? Our little literary spat, our wee correspondence contretemps… it’s all about me being in the right and you being in the wrong. Isn’t it? Do correct me if I’m, well, incorrect, but I’m pretty sure that, where the moral high ground is concerned, I’m holding it all.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So no matter what I’m thinking, when I stand waiting for your delayed trains and feeling the minutes of my life dripping away, pooling and freezing at my feet like a dirty puddle for people to drop their fag butts into*… no matter how impolitic and impolite the language in my head is, as my fingers and toes turn blue and my language turns bluer, no matter what words I use in my head to curse your wretched train company, I nonetheless keep things civil here. Because I don’t want to lose the moral high ground.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Interesting aside: do you know where the phrase “to lose the moral high ground” comes from, Mark? I bet Sue does. Sue? No? Well in that case let me tell you. The phrase “to lose the moral high ground” comes from the famous Battle of Mafeking in the Wars of the Roses (1972-1981), when the Emperor Nero was besieged by the invading armies of William the Conqueror. Nero arranged his outnumbered forces on Moral Hill (the next hill along from Edge Hill, in the wild and mountainous Cotswolds region of Northern England). The plan worked well – William’s forces surged and broke upon the lower slopes like waves against a cliff as Nero rained death and destruction upon them from above… until, buoyed by his unlikely success, Nero led a counter-charge down the hill.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Alas! He lost the moral high ground, Mark! And next thing you know, he copped an arrow in the eye, Hannibal crossed the Alps, Cromwell’s forces arrived too late, William won the battle, and the rest, as they say, is history.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">To lose the moral high ground: to metaphorically throw away a winning position and end up getting whipped by a Frenchman (of all things). A lesson from the past, Mark. And history, if it doesn’t exactly repeat itself (history never repeats itself, Sue: give me one example of history repeating itself ever. Go on, just one. You can’t, can you? Because it’s never happened! History repeating itself: what a ridiculous thing to say!) then history does at least move in parallels. And I, for one, don’t want to let the use of a robust word or two put me in danger of getting a spanking from the French. Or a parallel version of the French.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">No, sir! No ma’am! The moral high ground remains all mine!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Anyway. Where were we? How are you doing? Do you need a comfort break, Mark? Do you need an energy drink, Sue? Banana anyone? No? Good! Let’s keep going! Let’s press on!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So there I was, cold and blue and wondering just how delayed the 21.20 to Oxford was going to wind up being… when I saw, like a star above a stable in the East, a single ray of hope shining amid the dark and drear and despair and delays of the announcements board.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">The 21.48, Mark! To Worcester Shrub Hill! That sucker stops at Oxford! And it appeared to be leaving on time! So it was leaving half an hour later than the train I was supposed to be on, the train I had planned being on, the train that would have got me home in time to have some dinner before bed… but it was a train leaving Paddington! It was a train headed in the right direction!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Go West, young man, thought I! Together we will go our way! Together we will leave some day! Together, your hand in my hands! Together we will make our plans!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I made my plans, Mark! I abandoned all hope of the 21.20 – and I bagged myself a place on the 21.48. I was getting out of London town… and, at this stage at least, only half an hour later than expected.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It was a reason for optimism, of sorts. Right? I mean, I take what optimism I can, these days, from your trains. I clutch at what straws as I can find. Even the ones that occasionally turn out to break the camel’s back.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">But then, I’m an optimistic kinda guy, Sue! I see the sunny side! Have I told you that about myself? Has it come across in my 81 letters over the last seven months? My natural predisposition to see the best in any given situation?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Actually: how much have I told you about myself? Shall we talk about me, for a while? Okay then, why not! We have plenty of time left!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So. I was born, Mark, in a crossfire hurricane (and I howled at my Ma in the driving rain. Well you would, wouldn’t you?) I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag; I was schooled with a strap right across my back. I won’t lie to you, Sue: it was a tough childhood. But it’s alright now – in fact it’s a gas…</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Oh, okay, sorry, I’m just being silly. I wasn’t really born in a crossfire hurricane. I was actually born under a wandering star. (And like I’ve always said: wheels are made for rolling, mules are made to pack – and I’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I was born in the USA, Mark! Born down in a deadman’s town – the first kick I took was when I hit the ground. I ended up like a dog that’s been beat too much, Sue. I’ve spent half my life just covering up.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Actually, you know what? Let’s not talk about me after all. Let’s talk about you, Sue! Tell me: what do you think of me?**</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">No? Suit yourself. And you usually have so much to share! You’re usually so… communicative!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Back to the story, then. You’ll remember that, after working late and rushing across all London to make the 21.20 from Paddington Town to Oxford International, our hero came unstuck in the face of train-related incompetence. You’ll remember how he froze his heroic extremities off waiting in the concourse for his delayed train to stop being delayed. You’ll remember how our hero (well, me, I won’t be falsely modest) came up with the daring and brilliant damage-reduction policy of jumping on the 21.48 to Worcester Shrub Hill instead.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And so the story continues. And so, as both Sonny and Cher expressed it so beautifully exactly 45 years ago, the beat goes on.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I was feeling oddly pleased with myself, Mark, for being only half an hour behind schedule. How is that? Is it a recurrence of my Stockholm Syndrome again? Am I to be pathetically grateful to you for only wasting half an hour of my time? Well, no, as it turns out.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Just as we were about to leave, Mark, just as we were building up a good head of steam and preparing to chuff on out of Paddington, the old 21.20 only gets his chops on and chuffs out ahead of us! So I could have caught it after all!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I watched it go, Mark! And then I watched through the window as we slowed down behind it, and huffed and puffed slower and slower behind it, all the way to Reading and beyond. And I thought to myself – if I had caught that 21.20 train, I’d be approximately two minutes ahead of myself, sitting on this here 21.48… that’s already running slower than it should be.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">(Sorry, am I confusing you, Mark? Are you scratching your head, Sue? Basically, both trains left pretty much together, at about 10 minutes to 10 o’clock. One of them on time, the other half an hour late. And then both trains, the one on time and the one that was already half an hour late, slowed down around Reading, and lost still more time. Until one train was 15 minutes delayed, and the other was 45 minutes delayed. Got it? Great! Well done!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Mark, Sue: to be clear. The train I was actually on was running 15 minutes slow. But the train I should have been on, the train I had turned up to catch in the first place, was running 45 minutes slow. And so that’s the delay I’m writing about. That’s the amount of my time you wasted last night. That’s the reason this letter is so long.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">And so the story ends. We trundled, tiredly and tiresomely, into Oxford station at five minutes past 11 last night, Mark. The train I was on and the train I was supposed to be on, pretty much arrived together.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">I was supposed to have been at Oxford by 20 minutes past 10 last night. I actually arrived at five minutes past 11. As I believe I said before, and at the risk of repeating myself, that’s entirely your fault. Those 45 minutes of my life that were lost last night – that’s your fault.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Is that good enough, Mark? Of course it’s not good enough! But what can be done, Mark! What can we do to make this thing better? We can’t go on like this! I’m running out of things to say – I’m having to resort to lyrics from Lee Marvin songs!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Is it to be the elephants after all, Mark? Do I have to show you my elephants, Sue?</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">*that metaphor didn’t work at all, did it? Never mind. Allow me one per letter, at least!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">**And that joke was brought to you by the year 1981. Coincidentally, the same year the Emperor Nero lost his eye at the Battle of Mafeking. History repeats itself!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476648"><span id="yui_3_2_0_35_132817775476688"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv1793353343yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv1793353343Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766107" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_35_1328177754766149" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979266876113612242.post-81338194342367571482012-02-01T03:25:00.000-08:002012-02-01T03:27:11.048-08:0031 January 2012. Letter 80<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820488"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204149"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204150"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204103" style="font-size: 13px; ">Dear Mark and Sue</span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820488"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204149"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204150"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204103" style="font-size: 13px; "><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820488"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965112 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395678 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545388" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760984" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204149"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204150"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204103" style="font-size: 13px; "><b>Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 31/1/12. Amount of my day wasted: six</b></span></span></span></span><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820496" style="font-size: 13px; "><b> minutes.</b></span></span></span></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820488"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820496" style="font-size: 13px; "><b></b></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Marky Mark! Siouxsie Sue! Marky Mark and the Get Fresh Crew!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Is that what you call yourselves, Mark, in the First Great Western hood, when you’re hanging with the First Great Western homeboys, when you’re with the First Great Western kids on the First Great Western block? Marky Mark and the Get Fresh Crew? No? Well you should. Somebody should, at least. I’m surprised nobody’s thought of it yet.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">So! Anyway! It’s another day, another delay, another reason for us to renew our vows to each other. Your inexplicable vow to ensure that I’m not getting anything like value for money from my train ticket; my rather petulant and Pyrrhic vow to waste as much of your time as you’re wasting of mine. A marriage made in heaven, Sue! Or if not heaven, a marriage made somewhere between Reading and Slough. And whoever thought that would be possible? Out of those dead lands flowers grow!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Today, you will doubtless be relieved to hear, I’m writing a shorter letter. Yesterday, my train to work was only delayed by six minutes. Well done, Mark! That’s nearly on time! That’s you coming pretty close to doing what you’re supposed to be doing! Alright! High fives!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">One thing, however. My train yesterday, my delayed train in the morning, the train that came pretty nearly close to running as you promised me it would (but not quite) – why was it only three carriages? It’s supposed to be eight carriages, Mark! And, as we have already learned, eight into three doesn’t go. You can’t put eight carriage loads of people into just three train carriages. And if you do, if you try, then those people have to squeeze up and suck in breath and jostle together and force themselves into awkward contortions by the luggage racks and generally achieve a level of intimacy with their fellow commuters that I’m sure as properly and inherently repressed English citizens nobody’s really comfortable with.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">It’s not pretty, Mark. And it’s certainly not value for money. Four hundred and eighty quid a month to stand, squeezed and squeezing, squashed and squashing, all the way to London – and still arrive six minutes late? That’s not value for money!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Though, to be fair, there was one upside. At least all that bodily contact, all that unwanted and unwelcome forced intimacy, kept us warm. There was that. Because the train didn’t appear to have any heating, Mark: or if it did then the heating was turned off. And it is cold outside, isn’t it? It’s cold outside and it’s cold inside!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">My favourite badger-themed weather website (don’t tell me you don’t believe there is such a thing, Mark. Look it up! Google it, Sue – if you can spare a moment from all that communicating, if you can find a few seconds out of your day to just stop communicating for once – type in “weather” and “badger” and see what happens. I’m not joking. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’!) – my favourite badger-themed weather website tells me that it’s going to stay cold a little while longer yet too. It tells me that the cold snap is set to continue. It has little graphs and charts and stuff. It’s way cool. (Pun totally intended. Pun always intended.)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you enjoy looking at those kinds of websites, Mark? Weather websites, I mean. I do! I loves ‘em! Me and weather – I’m sort of obsessed with it. All that measuring, Mark! All those numbers to compare! I can’t get enough!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">What about you, Sue? No? I thought not. Weather – it’s a boy thing, right? It doesn’t take a psychologist to work out why, either. I’m no huge Old Dr Freud (and I’m certainly not getting any Jung-er! Sorry. Memo to self: no more psychology jokes) – I’m no huge Emma Freud, but I reckon it’s easy to see why boys are obsessed with weather, with all its measurements and comparisons and insistence on the vital difference an inch or two here or there can make… and girls just aren’t. (Apart from Georgie Palmer, obviously, who used to do the weather on Oxford Tonight. Whatever happened to Georgie Palmer? I miss Georgie Palmer!)</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">That may even be the same reason I’m obsessed with all these minutes you keep taking from me, Mark, and the same reason you at least take the time to write back and apologise (when you’re not watching Don’t Tell The Bride)… whereas Sue, who as we all know, is in fact a lady, just doesn’t seem that bothered.</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Do you think that’s it, Mark? Do you subscribe to Matthew Freud’s theories of weather-and-train-related psychology? Is it all really about us chaps boasting about the lengths of our delays? I’d sure like to know!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Au revoir!</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><br /></span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); ">Dom</span></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820448"><span id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820488"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_1318254744965114 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_14_131832782395680 yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_25_132126533545390" id="yiv78335848yui_3_2_0_16_131824691760995" style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); "><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span"><span class="yiv78335848Apple-style-span" id="yui_3_2_0_17_132809103820496" style="font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_17_1328091038204146" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></span></span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0