Dear Mark and Sue
Re: 19.21 FGW service from Paddington to Paddington, 28/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 12 minutes.
Hey Mark and Sue! Don't make it bad! Take your slow trains... and make them better! Remember to let them into your - actually, I'll stop that there. Not sure it's really working, is it?
So! What's what? How's tricks? How's treats? (See what I did there, Sue! It's Halloween! Tricks! Treats! Now that's some pretty flashy communicating, eh? Keeping it topical-style. Call me a fully-paid up member of Club Topicala!) Have you all been dressing up and carving your pumpkins? Have you been telling spooky stories and giving each other the willies? Are things going bump in the night? Are you worried about your ghoulies?
Me too, dudes! My ghoulies have been giving me no end of jip. It's a scary business, is Halloween! And even if you can avoid the feral gangs of youths demanding chocolate with menaces at your doorstep come sundown; assuming you can dodge the drunken office parties, the saucy she-devils and "hilarious" Human Resources managers dressed as extras from Thriller wanting to pinch your bottom and become your best pal; then there's always the danger of possession by the unquiet souls and vengeful legions of the walking undead! Really, Mark, Halloween can be a very stressful time all round.
I tell you: if it wasn't for all the free sweets I "confiscate" from my children, I'd ban the whole bothersome pagan business altogether.
But enough about me! I always talk about me! Let's talk about you!
What have you been up to, Sue? What's new and fresh and exciting in the world of corporate communications? Any cutting-edge communicating techniques I need to know about? Any fast-breaking communications mode d'emploi (as our garlic-breathing cousines across La Manche like to put it) I should be researching? What's the latest word on the latest words? How are they communicating on the front line these days? How, Sue, will we communicate in the future? As Director of Communications for the Train Operator of the Year (votes cast relating to the year 2009), share with me the next generation of communicating technology! I am thirsty for communicating knowledge, Sue! I am, literally (not literally literally, but, y'know, literally) an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with facts from the communications encyclopedia. The communopedia, as it's probably never referred to, but should be.
Seriously, Sue! I want to learn! I can't wait to learn! Let's get down to Communications town!
And you, Mark? What's the word from the Managing Director's office? What have you been watching on TV? Should Frankie Cococcooccoccozzazzzazzaaaa still be in the X Factor? Did Nancy Dell'Olliollioilliolliolio deserve to be ejected from Strictly? Can you believe Big Brother is still even on? And do you realise that I'm A Celebrity is starting again in a few weeks?
Truly, Mark, this is a golden age for television: der Goldenes Zeitalter, as our sausage-sucking cousins on the banks of the Rhine would say! A near-mythical epoch for the gogglebox! And on top of it all, there's Young Apprentice!
Ah, Young Apprentice! Do you watch Young Apprentice, Mark? Those crazy kids playing at being grown-ups! The boys in their Dads' suits, the girls with their quaint concepts of equality in the workplace! (Haven't they heard of the glass ceiling, Mark? It's there for a reason, for goodness sake! And at least, being glass, they can still see through it, right?)
I love Young Apprentice! And you know what I love the most about it? I love the fact that these kids still touchingly believe that the men at the top, the ones running stuff (the ones on the right side of the glass ceiling), actually know what they're doing! I love that those kids all seem to hold on to the idea that the bigger the suit and shinier the tiepin, the more competent the man. Bless 'em!
It's like still believing in Santa Claus, isn't it Mark? It's like still believing in ghoulies and ghosties! It's something we all start off convinced is true - only to discover later is in fact a myth, a story, something our parents made up to convince us that the world isn't the endless awful procession of tedium and drudgery and blown chances and fractured dreams that it probably in fact is.
Do you remember how old you were when you realised that most people actually have no idea what they're doing, Mark? Do you remember the moment when you discovered that just about everyone in any position of responsibility is basically just muddling through, half blagging it and half terrified of being found out (and I suspect the only reason more of us aren't found out is because the people who really should be finding us out are just as incompetent and terrified as we are)?
Of course, it may be different in the old train business, Mark. In fact: I'm sure it's different. I'm sure all of you who rise to the top at First Great Western do so because you're the best of the best, the cream of the crop, a rare and beautiful combination of imagination and innovation and intelligence. Good. Great! Well done for bucking the trend!
But here's the thing. I was 12 minutes late home on Friday. That was entirely down to the incompetence of your company. Not the drivers, or the guards, or the man who punches my ticket. Someone at the top, Mark! Somebody ain't showing that rare and beautiful shizzle I was just talking about! Could it be, Mark, Sue, that the kids from the Young Apprentice are going to have to add First Great Western to their list of disappointment and shattered illusions?
Say it ain't so! Say you can begin to make it better! (Better, better, better! Na, na na na-na-na-naaa! I knew I'd make Hey Jude work in the end!)
Au revoir!
Dom
Monday, 31 October 2011
Friday, 28 October 2011
27 October 2011. Letter 48
Dear Mark and Sue
Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford, 27/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 35 minutes.
Mark! Sue! Hello! Is it me you're looking for?
I'll level with you, chaps: I wonder where you are. And I wonder what you do. Are you somewhere feeling lonely? Or is someone loving you? I do hope you're not feeling lonely! I do hope someone's loving you! I hope lots of people are loving you! In a fraternal, non-saucy way, obviously. A familial, rather than over-familiar, way.
In fact, I like to think of the whole First Great Western family as a big... well, family. Not a dysfunctional family, like The Simpsons, or the Wests, or the Gaddafis. But a nice family. The Waltons, maybe. Or the von Trapps. A nice big musical Alpine family, Mark! Perfectly in harmony! And who hold no truck with any of those over-keen goose-stepping types who come round trying to romance the eldest daughter! That's exactly the kind of family I think of when I think of the First Great Western family!
It's a beautiful image, Mark. I shall add it to my list of favourite things. (Somewhere between whiskers on kittens and silver white winters that melt into springs.)
Anyway. Enough of these musical musings. Lovely though they are, we're here for graver, more serious reasons. The trains delay and fail, Mark! The call-centre cannot hold! Last night... oh, last night was grim. Were you called back in to the office, Mark? Were you summoned from your karaoke bar to get communicating, Sue? (Thursday night is the new Friday night, after all! I've written that feature a few times. I've also written Monday Night is the new Friday Night, Sunday Night is the new Saturday Night, Staying In is the new Going Out, Work is the new Play and, slightly bizarrely, but it was for the Sunday Times and they were paying so who was I to argue, Gambling is the new Yoga.)
Did you both immediately drop whatever you were doing (the remote control, Mark? The sambuca, Sue?), rush into the street, holler a Hansom and hot-foot it back to the First Great Western Command Centre as fast as the driver could legally, safely and responsibly take you? I'll bet you did! And quite right too! The trains were all up the proverbial and it was all hands on deck to make sure you could continue to work tirelessly to ensure the service you provide is as good as possible!
(Tirelessly, Mark! I love that! Working so hard you don't even get tired! Tiredness is for the weak! Fatigue is for the worthless! We can work and work and continue to work and not even get tired! We are First Great Western and we are tireless!)
So it seems there was an incident last night. Something had happened near Reading. Something, so the rumours go, rather grim. Our conductor announced it as a "blockage" on the line. That didn't sound nice to me. That sounded like a euphemism.
If the "blockage" was the fatality I suspect it might be, then that, in fact, is awful. If it was an accidental fatality - by which I mean the kind of fatality where the person involved did not intend anything fatal to happen at all - then it is immeasurably awful. And please don't think for a moment that I intend to trivialise or belittle that awfulness in any way. I don't.
But, Mark, it happened. And what we have to do, is deal with the consequences as they affect us in the best way we can.
Your job - or so it seems to me - is to make the trains run on time. In good times and in bad. To deal with the slings and arrows and outrageous misfortune and signal failures and busted engines and chipped windscreens and even fatalities... your job, so it seems to me, is to take arms against this sea of troubles, Mark - and by opposing, end them.
(I can't take credit for the inadvertent poetry of that paragraph, Sue, much as I'd like to. I was actually paraphrasing the immortal words of William Shatner, in the seminal 1967 Star Trek episode: Polonius and the Arras of Uranus. I know that some believe that William Shatner was not actually the author of those words, and that they were instead the work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, but I don't think we need to lend credence to that kind of hokum, do we?)
So. We need to deal with delays when they happen, no matter why they happen. And as far as I can tell, Mark, delays occur for one of three broad reasons. Either it's Network Rail's fault, or it's your fault, or it's some random fault (like a fatality). But the responsibility for getting me home on time, for coping with the delay, for dealing with the situation, is yours alone. You're the one running the service. You're the one taking my money.
And this is the thing, Mark. You're taking my money. Not only that: I'm paying in advance!
How many other service industries can you think of operate on the model that the customer pays in advance? And not only that, but having paid in advance, if the thing he's paid for turns out not to be what he thought he was paying for - let's say he can't get a seat, or the toilets aren't working, or the service turns out to take half as long again as it was supposed to - then he's supposed to just put up with that? He's supposed to just accept it? Day after day, week after week, months and years on end until the last syllable of recorded time? (That last bit was stolen from Shatner again. Sorry.)
And not only all that - but then he's expected to be so happy with this sorry state of affairs that he'll gladly accept a price hike for that service of more than twice the rate of inflation? Two years running? For more of the same?
Mark: can you think of any other service industry that operates on such principles? That asks people to pay in advance for such a service? Sue? No? No.
So yes, Mark, a fatality on the line is an awful thing. But you know what? Maybe you should have a system in place to cope with such awfulness? And you know what else? A fatality on the line makes me feel that time is short and life is cruel and maybe every single minute is precious. And not to be wasted on unnecessary train delays.
Oh dear. Am I ranting? Am I raving? (Not that kind of raving, Sue! Not the glowsticks and saucer eyes and arms in the air kind of raving! We're not on our holidays now!) I do apologise! Let's calm things down. Let's change things up. Let us, as the late Jim Morrissey, singer of psychedelic LA rockers The Smiths, said, change the mood from sad to gladness. (Or was it the other way around?)
Whatever shall we discuss?
I'll be honest: I'm not in the mood for current affairs, Mark. The doings of the day are not floating my boat. The issues of the moment are failing to light my fires. It's all so grim! And after the whole Colonel Gadd-icky thing, I want to keep off the grimness. I want something feel-good, Sue! Something to make us all feel better!
I know! I've got it!
I read in my super soaraway today that company director's pay is up, up, up, Mark! The big men at the top - they're seeing out this recession in style! They're showing the rest of us coping on below-inflation pay rises, or no pay rises, just how to do it! Forty-nine per cent, on average, Mark! Not bad!
It cheers me up no end, Mark! I do hope you're among those corporate winners! I do hope you're getting your bonuses and incentives and share options! I'd hate to think you were the only MD in town not invited to the party! Please tell me you're not having to scrape by like the rest of us, Mark. Please let it not be that you'll be wondering how you're going to afford to travel on your own trains once the price rises kick in after Christmas!
Au revoir!
Dom
Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford, 27/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 35 minutes.
Mark! Sue! Hello! Is it me you're looking for?
I'll level with you, chaps: I wonder where you are. And I wonder what you do. Are you somewhere feeling lonely? Or is someone loving you? I do hope you're not feeling lonely! I do hope someone's loving you! I hope lots of people are loving you! In a fraternal, non-saucy way, obviously. A familial, rather than over-familiar, way.
In fact, I like to think of the whole First Great Western family as a big... well, family. Not a dysfunctional family, like The Simpsons, or the Wests, or the Gaddafis. But a nice family. The Waltons, maybe. Or the von Trapps. A nice big musical Alpine family, Mark! Perfectly in harmony! And who hold no truck with any of those over-keen goose-stepping types who come round trying to romance the eldest daughter! That's exactly the kind of family I think of when I think of the First Great Western family!
It's a beautiful image, Mark. I shall add it to my list of favourite things. (Somewhere between whiskers on kittens and silver white winters that melt into springs.)
Anyway. Enough of these musical musings. Lovely though they are, we're here for graver, more serious reasons. The trains delay and fail, Mark! The call-centre cannot hold! Last night... oh, last night was grim. Were you called back in to the office, Mark? Were you summoned from your karaoke bar to get communicating, Sue? (Thursday night is the new Friday night, after all! I've written that feature a few times. I've also written Monday Night is the new Friday Night, Sunday Night is the new Saturday Night, Staying In is the new Going Out, Work is the new Play and, slightly bizarrely, but it was for the Sunday Times and they were paying so who was I to argue, Gambling is the new Yoga.)
Did you both immediately drop whatever you were doing (the remote control, Mark? The sambuca, Sue?), rush into the street, holler a Hansom and hot-foot it back to the First Great Western Command Centre as fast as the driver could legally, safely and responsibly take you? I'll bet you did! And quite right too! The trains were all up the proverbial and it was all hands on deck to make sure you could continue to work tirelessly to ensure the service you provide is as good as possible!
(Tirelessly, Mark! I love that! Working so hard you don't even get tired! Tiredness is for the weak! Fatigue is for the worthless! We can work and work and continue to work and not even get tired! We are First Great Western and we are tireless!)
So it seems there was an incident last night. Something had happened near Reading. Something, so the rumours go, rather grim. Our conductor announced it as a "blockage" on the line. That didn't sound nice to me. That sounded like a euphemism.
If the "blockage" was the fatality I suspect it might be, then that, in fact, is awful. If it was an accidental fatality - by which I mean the kind of fatality where the person involved did not intend anything fatal to happen at all - then it is immeasurably awful. And please don't think for a moment that I intend to trivialise or belittle that awfulness in any way. I don't.
But, Mark, it happened. And what we have to do, is deal with the consequences as they affect us in the best way we can.
Your job - or so it seems to me - is to make the trains run on time. In good times and in bad. To deal with the slings and arrows and outrageous misfortune and signal failures and busted engines and chipped windscreens and even fatalities... your job, so it seems to me, is to take arms against this sea of troubles, Mark - and by opposing, end them.
(I can't take credit for the inadvertent poetry of that paragraph, Sue, much as I'd like to. I was actually paraphrasing the immortal words of William Shatner, in the seminal 1967 Star Trek episode: Polonius and the Arras of Uranus. I know that some believe that William Shatner was not actually the author of those words, and that they were instead the work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, but I don't think we need to lend credence to that kind of hokum, do we?)
So. We need to deal with delays when they happen, no matter why they happen. And as far as I can tell, Mark, delays occur for one of three broad reasons. Either it's Network Rail's fault, or it's your fault, or it's some random fault (like a fatality). But the responsibility for getting me home on time, for coping with the delay, for dealing with the situation, is yours alone. You're the one running the service. You're the one taking my money.
And this is the thing, Mark. You're taking my money. Not only that: I'm paying in advance!
How many other service industries can you think of operate on the model that the customer pays in advance? And not only that, but having paid in advance, if the thing he's paid for turns out not to be what he thought he was paying for - let's say he can't get a seat, or the toilets aren't working, or the service turns out to take half as long again as it was supposed to - then he's supposed to just put up with that? He's supposed to just accept it? Day after day, week after week, months and years on end until the last syllable of recorded time? (That last bit was stolen from Shatner again. Sorry.)
And not only all that - but then he's expected to be so happy with this sorry state of affairs that he'll gladly accept a price hike for that service of more than twice the rate of inflation? Two years running? For more of the same?
Mark: can you think of any other service industry that operates on such principles? That asks people to pay in advance for such a service? Sue? No? No.
So yes, Mark, a fatality on the line is an awful thing. But you know what? Maybe you should have a system in place to cope with such awfulness? And you know what else? A fatality on the line makes me feel that time is short and life is cruel and maybe every single minute is precious. And not to be wasted on unnecessary train delays.
Oh dear. Am I ranting? Am I raving? (Not that kind of raving, Sue! Not the glowsticks and saucer eyes and arms in the air kind of raving! We're not on our holidays now!) I do apologise! Let's calm things down. Let's change things up. Let us, as the late Jim Morrissey, singer of psychedelic LA rockers The Smiths, said, change the mood from sad to gladness. (Or was it the other way around?)
Whatever shall we discuss?
I'll be honest: I'm not in the mood for current affairs, Mark. The doings of the day are not floating my boat. The issues of the moment are failing to light my fires. It's all so grim! And after the whole Colonel Gadd-icky thing, I want to keep off the grimness. I want something feel-good, Sue! Something to make us all feel better!
I know! I've got it!
I read in my super soaraway today that company director's pay is up, up, up, Mark! The big men at the top - they're seeing out this recession in style! They're showing the rest of us coping on below-inflation pay rises, or no pay rises, just how to do it! Forty-nine per cent, on average, Mark! Not bad!
It cheers me up no end, Mark! I do hope you're among those corporate winners! I do hope you're getting your bonuses and incentives and share options! I'd hate to think you were the only MD in town not invited to the party! Please tell me you're not having to scrape by like the rest of us, Mark. Please let it not be that you'll be wondering how you're going to afford to travel on your own trains once the price rises kick in after Christmas!
Au revoir!
Dom
Mark! Back once again with the renegade master!
Dear Dom,
Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay to your journeys.
On Friday our 18:51 service developed a mechanical fault at Paddington which although was quickly repaired meant that our service had missed its scheduled path and subsequently arrived into Oxford 34 minutes late.
On Monday and Tuesday our 08:06 service to Paddington ran behind trains that were running late and caused a 7 & 10 minute delay to your arrival into London.
As I have mentioned before I view any delay as a disappointment and as a failure on our part to deliver the expected service. To address this we always review our own performance to see if we can do things better and I have a team who work tirelessly to ensure the service we provide is as good as possible. We don't get it right every time and clearly there is more to be done. You have my assurance I am committed to ensuring we will do better.
Kind regards
Mark
Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay to your journeys.
On Friday our 18:51 service developed a mechanical fault at Paddington which although was quickly repaired meant that our service had missed its scheduled path and subsequently arrived into Oxford 34 minutes late.
On Monday and Tuesday our 08:06 service to Paddington ran behind trains that were running late and caused a 7 & 10 minute delay to your arrival into London.
As I have mentioned before I view any delay as a disappointment and as a failure on our part to deliver the expected service. To address this we always review our own performance to see if we can do things better and I have a team who work tirelessly to ensure the service we provide is as good as possible. We don't get it right every time and clearly there is more to be done. You have my assurance I am committed to ensuring we will do better.
Kind regards
Mark
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
25 October 2011. Letter 47
Dear Mark and Sue
Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington, 25/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 13 minutes.
Mark! Sue! What's the story, Mark and Sue-ey? Do you need a little time to wake up? Do you need a little time to rest your mind?
No? Good! Great! Let's get down to the nitty and the gritty then. Let's get our hands dirty. Let's roll up our sleeves and remove our rings and lather up our forearms and prepare to plunge, James Herriot-like, up to our elbows in the fundamentals of train travel. Does that sound agreeable to you? It does? Wonderful! Here goes, then...
It is with a heart made heavy by responsibility and a soul weighed down by the burden of bearing bad news that I feel I have to inform you, Mark, that once again, one of your trains ran late. And perhaps most pertinently from my own perspective, the train in question was supposed to be carrying me to work.
I know. I know. My head is bowed, my brow is furrowed. Me eyes well up. Why must it be so, Mark? What, in the words of the Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield's 1987 Number 2 hit (as you doubtless remember, Sue, it was kept off the Number 1 spot by Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, although of course it did reach the top of the charts in Ireland - the Irish, presumably, being less enamoured of the Newton-le-Willows warbler than the rest of us), have I done to deserve this?
It was delayed by 13 minutes, Mark. That's 21 point six recurring per cent of an hour, Sue. That's enough time to listen to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times! And if you think 13 minutes motionless on a tatty old train feels like a long time, just try listening to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times!
The difference, of course, is that I can choose whether or not to listen to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times (depending mostly on how insane I might be). And I did not choose to spend an extra 13 minutes on your train. In fact, I had paid you a substantial amount of money to make sure I did not spend those extra 13 minutes on your train. It was a specific part of our unspoken contract.
So, anyway. Here I am. Cheated out of my time by your inefficiencies again. Come chasing petty recompense again. And what shall we talk about today? What's going on in the world?
How about the Eurozone Crisis, Mark? Nah, too prosaic, too easy to sort out. It'll never take me 13 minutes to cover that! I can do it in a single sentence. You want my solution to the Eurozone Crisis? Sell some of Greece to Germany. Simples. The Greeks get their money, the Germans get that nice spot of land by the Med they've been after for a while, none of the banks default, job's a good 'un. Or, as they say in the Fatherland: Das ist gute arbeit!
What about Colonel Gaddafi, then? (You know Colonel Gaddafi, Sue! Funny looking Libyan chap, friend of the Blairs, valued customer of the British arms dealing community, occasional flogger of Semtex. Got lynched by a mob recently. Rum old business all round.)
Hmm. You know what, Mark? I'm not going to discuss Colonel Gaddafi with you. It's just too gory. Just too... icky! Colonel Gadd-icky, that's what I call him!
Ooh, I know! Sue! John Terry! Captain of England! Lion of Chelsea! Alleged racial abuser of opponents and supposed cuckolder of team-mates! Shall we talk about John Terry, with his sub-Sid Vicious hair and his sub-standard morality? Shall we chew the fat over John Terry, with his deeply dodgy Dad and his supposed mocking of American tourists in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? Shall we, Mark? What say you, Sue? Yes? Okay then, let's do it!
You first!
What's that you say? No? Oh. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we should stay clear of the whole racism in sport issue. Perhaps we shouldn't get embroiled in that particular imbroglio. Perhaps we should stick to what we know. Good thinking, Sue! Good communicating!
So. Sticking to what we know, then. And what, my controversy-dodging comrades, do we know? Do we know, for example, why the trains are always late? Do we know why they're overcrowded? Do we know why they're so expensive? Do we know any of these things?
Because if we do know these things, Mark, then the next question must surely be: why are we allowing things to continue in this sorry state? Because we do want to improve, don't we Mark? We want the trains to run on time! We want people to be able to sit down when they've paid outlandish amounts for their tickets! We want to not have to raise ticket prices by twice the rate of inflation for two years running whilst in the midst of the worst recession in living memory! Right? Right!
So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to make some positive changes, Mark... or will we simply do what John Terry always does? Will we just mutter a few insincere apologies and carry on as before?
What do you think, chaps?
Au revoir!
Dom
Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington, 25/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 13 minutes.
Mark! Sue! What's the story, Mark and Sue-ey? Do you need a little time to wake up? Do you need a little time to rest your mind?
No? Good! Great! Let's get down to the nitty and the gritty then. Let's get our hands dirty. Let's roll up our sleeves and remove our rings and lather up our forearms and prepare to plunge, James Herriot-like, up to our elbows in the fundamentals of train travel. Does that sound agreeable to you? It does? Wonderful! Here goes, then...
It is with a heart made heavy by responsibility and a soul weighed down by the burden of bearing bad news that I feel I have to inform you, Mark, that once again, one of your trains ran late. And perhaps most pertinently from my own perspective, the train in question was supposed to be carrying me to work.
I know. I know. My head is bowed, my brow is furrowed. Me eyes well up. Why must it be so, Mark? What, in the words of the Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield's 1987 Number 2 hit (as you doubtless remember, Sue, it was kept off the Number 1 spot by Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, although of course it did reach the top of the charts in Ireland - the Irish, presumably, being less enamoured of the Newton-le-Willows warbler than the rest of us), have I done to deserve this?
It was delayed by 13 minutes, Mark. That's 21 point six recurring per cent of an hour, Sue. That's enough time to listen to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times! And if you think 13 minutes motionless on a tatty old train feels like a long time, just try listening to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times!
The difference, of course, is that I can choose whether or not to listen to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up 3.67924528 times (depending mostly on how insane I might be). And I did not choose to spend an extra 13 minutes on your train. In fact, I had paid you a substantial amount of money to make sure I did not spend those extra 13 minutes on your train. It was a specific part of our unspoken contract.
So, anyway. Here I am. Cheated out of my time by your inefficiencies again. Come chasing petty recompense again. And what shall we talk about today? What's going on in the world?
How about the Eurozone Crisis, Mark? Nah, too prosaic, too easy to sort out. It'll never take me 13 minutes to cover that! I can do it in a single sentence. You want my solution to the Eurozone Crisis? Sell some of Greece to Germany. Simples. The Greeks get their money, the Germans get that nice spot of land by the Med they've been after for a while, none of the banks default, job's a good 'un. Or, as they say in the Fatherland: Das ist gute arbeit!
What about Colonel Gaddafi, then? (You know Colonel Gaddafi, Sue! Funny looking Libyan chap, friend of the Blairs, valued customer of the British arms dealing community, occasional flogger of Semtex. Got lynched by a mob recently. Rum old business all round.)
Hmm. You know what, Mark? I'm not going to discuss Colonel Gaddafi with you. It's just too gory. Just too... icky! Colonel Gadd-icky, that's what I call him!
Ooh, I know! Sue! John Terry! Captain of England! Lion of Chelsea! Alleged racial abuser of opponents and supposed cuckolder of team-mates! Shall we talk about John Terry, with his sub-Sid Vicious hair and his sub-standard morality? Shall we chew the fat over John Terry, with his deeply dodgy Dad and his supposed mocking of American tourists in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? Shall we, Mark? What say you, Sue? Yes? Okay then, let's do it!
You first!
What's that you say? No? Oh. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we should stay clear of the whole racism in sport issue. Perhaps we shouldn't get embroiled in that particular imbroglio. Perhaps we should stick to what we know. Good thinking, Sue! Good communicating!
So. Sticking to what we know, then. And what, my controversy-dodging comrades, do we know? Do we know, for example, why the trains are always late? Do we know why they're overcrowded? Do we know why they're so expensive? Do we know any of these things?
Because if we do know these things, Mark, then the next question must surely be: why are we allowing things to continue in this sorry state? Because we do want to improve, don't we Mark? We want the trains to run on time! We want people to be able to sit down when they've paid outlandish amounts for their tickets! We want to not have to raise ticket prices by twice the rate of inflation for two years running whilst in the midst of the worst recession in living memory! Right? Right!
So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to make some positive changes, Mark... or will we simply do what John Terry always does? Will we just mutter a few insincere apologies and carry on as before?
What do you think, chaps?
Au revoir!
Dom
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
24 October 2011. Letter 46
Dear Mark and Sue
Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington, 24/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: nine minutes.
Hark, Mark! Ooh! Sue!
How, as the funny fat one from Friends used to say so hilariously, are you doin'? Are you good to go? Are you hot to trot? Are you champing (chomping, Sue? What do we think? Champing or chomping? Does one champ; or does one chomp? I'd welcome your input on this one) at the bit? Are you ready for the off?
You are? Good! Great! Super smashing fab! There's nothing like a positive attitude, Mark! There's nowt so uplifting as a can-do spirit! You guys should keep that up. You should make it compulsory. You should lead the entire team at the First Great Western Command Centre in daily motivational sing-songs. Let's get singing, Sue! Let's get singing glorious songs of positivity and optimism!
If we can't perform on the track, as it were, let's at least feel good about ourselves off the track! If we can't come up with the actual goods running-a-train-company-wise, let's at least keep smiling as if we could! If we can't walk the walk, let's talk the talk! Let's sing the songs! The important thing, Mark, is not how we perform: but how we're seen to perform, right?
Thought so.
Anyway. After Friday's epic 33-minuter and yesterday's corresponding seriously long letter, today is a day of relative relief for us both. My train to work yesterday was only nine minutes delayed, Mark! Well done! Give yourself a big pat on the back! And guess what? By only wasting nine minutes of my day, you can justifiably claim to have improved by around 366.7 per cent on Friday's performance! Nobody could argue with figures like that, Mark. Nobody. Except perhaps a madman. Or a pedant. Or a, you know, stickler. A mad, pedantic, stickler. And who cares what they think, eh? Silly sticklers.
So, we're agreed: by running the 08.06 service from Oxford to Paddington yesterday in such a brilliantly efficient way that it only arrived nine minutes after it was supposed to, you've effectively improved your service more than three-fold. Brilliant! That's the kind of thinking that gets you nominated for Train Operator of the Year, is that! That's the kind of operations that get you an 80-whatever-it-was per cent approval rating! Fantastic work! Outstanding!
Hang on!
Hold up!
Wait just one cotton-pickin' moment!
Major rethink in progress, Sue!
I may be wrong about that!
You've gone and tricked me again! Oh, you and your positive attitude, Mark! You and your confounded sunny outlook, Sue! Making me think that I should be grateful my train was ONLY delayed by nine minutes! Giving it the old glass-half-full thing! Clever, Sue! Fiendishly clever! Diabolically clever! Infernally clever! Devilishly clever! Ooh, you're good!
But the facts, as the funny fat one out of Friends never once said, are indisputable. The facts, in fact, remain - regardless of the rosiness of the tinted spectacles through which they are viewed. My train was nine minutes delayed.
The glass, Mark, may be half-full, or half-empty, but either way, the glass does not have the required amount of liquid in it. The glass is missing liquid. I paid for more liquid! Where's my liquid? We should not be grateful for a nine minute delay just because it's not a 33 minute delay! It's still nine minutes out of my life, Mark! You owe me more liquid!
Oh: and before I go, ponder this. I write these words on the Tuesday morning train. We're currently running, according to my clock, some 13 minutes behind schedule. Expect me to come chasing you for those minutes tomorrow, Mark! Start looking for liquid, Sue!
Au revoir!
Dom
Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington, 24/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: nine minutes.
Hark, Mark! Ooh! Sue!
How, as the funny fat one from Friends used to say so hilariously, are you doin'? Are you good to go? Are you hot to trot? Are you champing (chomping, Sue? What do we think? Champing or chomping? Does one champ; or does one chomp? I'd welcome your input on this one) at the bit? Are you ready for the off?
You are? Good! Great! Super smashing fab! There's nothing like a positive attitude, Mark! There's nowt so uplifting as a can-do spirit! You guys should keep that up. You should make it compulsory. You should lead the entire team at the First Great Western Command Centre in daily motivational sing-songs. Let's get singing, Sue! Let's get singing glorious songs of positivity and optimism!
If we can't perform on the track, as it were, let's at least feel good about ourselves off the track! If we can't come up with the actual goods running-a-train-company-wise, let's at least keep smiling as if we could! If we can't walk the walk, let's talk the talk! Let's sing the songs! The important thing, Mark, is not how we perform: but how we're seen to perform, right?
Thought so.
Anyway. After Friday's epic 33-minuter and yesterday's corresponding seriously long letter, today is a day of relative relief for us both. My train to work yesterday was only nine minutes delayed, Mark! Well done! Give yourself a big pat on the back! And guess what? By only wasting nine minutes of my day, you can justifiably claim to have improved by around 366.7 per cent on Friday's performance! Nobody could argue with figures like that, Mark. Nobody. Except perhaps a madman. Or a pedant. Or a, you know, stickler. A mad, pedantic, stickler. And who cares what they think, eh? Silly sticklers.
So, we're agreed: by running the 08.06 service from Oxford to Paddington yesterday in such a brilliantly efficient way that it only arrived nine minutes after it was supposed to, you've effectively improved your service more than three-fold. Brilliant! That's the kind of thinking that gets you nominated for Train Operator of the Year, is that! That's the kind of operations that get you an 80-whatever-it-was per cent approval rating! Fantastic work! Outstanding!
Hang on!
Hold up!
Wait just one cotton-pickin' moment!
Major rethink in progress, Sue!
I may be wrong about that!
You've gone and tricked me again! Oh, you and your positive attitude, Mark! You and your confounded sunny outlook, Sue! Making me think that I should be grateful my train was ONLY delayed by nine minutes! Giving it the old glass-half-full thing! Clever, Sue! Fiendishly clever! Diabolically clever! Infernally clever! Devilishly clever! Ooh, you're good!
But the facts, as the funny fat one out of Friends never once said, are indisputable. The facts, in fact, remain - regardless of the rosiness of the tinted spectacles through which they are viewed. My train was nine minutes delayed.
The glass, Mark, may be half-full, or half-empty, but either way, the glass does not have the required amount of liquid in it. The glass is missing liquid. I paid for more liquid! Where's my liquid? We should not be grateful for a nine minute delay just because it's not a 33 minute delay! It's still nine minutes out of my life, Mark! You owe me more liquid!
Oh: and before I go, ponder this. I write these words on the Tuesday morning train. We're currently running, according to my clock, some 13 minutes behind schedule. Expect me to come chasing you for those minutes tomorrow, Mark! Start looking for liquid, Sue!
Au revoir!
Dom
Monday, 24 October 2011
21 October 2011. Letter 45
Dear Mark and Sue
Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford, 21/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 33 minutes.
Mark! Sue! There you are! Thank goodness for that!
How the blue blazes are you, Mark? What's the word on the streets of Sue-town, er, Sue?
I do hope all is lickety-split and tickety-boo. I do hope all is ship-shape, Bristol fashion and best in show. I do hope this letter finds you, as it does me, in the pink!
I was so pleased to receive your latest response, Mark! I don't mind telling you: it fair made my day. Oh, who am I kidding: it made my week! I'm not ashamed of it, Mark! Every day, I sit poised over my inbox, clicking, reclicking, double-clicking and refreshing, hoping for some small sign you still care. Every day, I wait with held breath, with limbs all a-quiver and heart all a-flutter, desperate for word of your intentions towards me! Every day you don't write feels like a season in purgatory, Mark! A moment without word from you, Sue, is like a lifetime of silence!
So, yes. Thankyou for your last letter! It may not have been the longest, most comprehensive, or even the funniest letter you've ever written me - but that's ok. I know the pressure Sue's under every day, and we can't all communicate brilliantly every single time we communicate, can we? (I know I certainly can't.) The important thing is, you took the time and made the effort to reply to my concerns. For that I am genuinely grateful.
Your train service may be a disgrace, Mark, but you are gentleman enough to reply to my rants and rambles - and I do appreciate it. Please don't think for a moment I don't.
Anyway. Enough of the girly stuff. To business, Mark! To the deeds of the day and the matter in hand! Once more unto the beach!* Sharpen up a fresh pencil, Sue, and prepare to take notes! We've got 33 minutes to get through today. Thirty-three minutes of my time you wasted on Friday night - and 33 minutes I now accordingly intend to waste of your Monday afternoon.
It's a tall order - but we're pretty tall guys, you and I. Together we can do it. (Sue: you're no hobbit yourself. We're all three of us tall guys! Let's all have a big tall high five! Alright! Go Team Tall!)
So, Mark. Sue. Friday was not a good day for me. It should have been a great day! Stone Roses tickets were up for grabs! Two hundred and twenty thousand of the blighters! Surely, thought I, one or two tickets out of 220,000 should be gettable? Surely, thought I, one or two tickets out of 220,000 would be an achievable goal?
I'd even made preparations. I bunged the office intern the promise of a free drink to (wo)man the phones for me until I got in - just on the off-chance that all the tickets should go in the first 14 minutes they went on sale or something outlandish like that. I'd given her my ticketmaster passwords, my email log-ins, my credit card details... in short enough information about me for her to effortlessly thieve my identity and clean out my bank accounts. I told her if she got me four tickets I'd buy her drinks forever. (I didn't actually mean that, of course, but, hey, life is unfair and we all have to learn these lessons the hard way, right?)
She hadn't got tickets by the time I got in to work, Mark. I was forced to sack her on the spot.
And an hour later, after much refreshing of the internets, after repeated re-pressing of the redial button and a great deal of the kind of colourful language that is generally not encouraged in office environments, I remained ticketless. I'm not going to see the Stone Roses play at Heaton Park, Mark. I won't be one of 220,000 middle-aged Mancunian men in fading 20-year-old t-shirts getting drunk and over-excited and singing the wrong words to "I Am The Resurrection". (Or rather, I will be middle-aged and drunk and dressed 20 years out of date and singing badly... but just not in the presence of the Stone Roses when I do so. I'll be at home, like I usually am when I'm doing those things.)
Of course, none of this is your fault - but I feel it's relevant to the letter. Just to paint a picture of my day. Just to get an insight into the fact that I wasn't in the best of moods.
And let us not forget the real tragedy of the situation, Mark, the real victim of the piece. That poor intern, Mark! Because she couldn't get me those tickets, all her years of study and application have gone to waste. It's a crying shame. I feel terrible. Poor girl.
So. I get through the day without further negative incident. But not too much positive either, if I'm honest. And fast-forward eight hours or so and I'm running for a train at London's newly re-ceilinged London Paddington Station. Look at me go! There I am, Sue! Legs pumping! Chest heaving! Arms wheeling! Feet pounding! Watch as I bob and weave through the crowd, shimmying and chicaning past the commuters and tourists, powering down Platform 8 to get a place on the early train home!
It was like Coe vs Ovett in Prague, 1978 Mark! It was like Ovett vs Coe in Moscow 1980! It was exactly like Coe vs Ovett vs Cram in Los Angeles 1984! (That was the year Sebastian Coe used a rude word after he won the 1500 metre Gold, Sue - I'm sure you remember. But it was okay - because he's a nice middle-class boy. If, for example, ooh, I don't know, Wayne Rooney, say, ever used a rude word on the football pitch, it would be an outrage! A scandal! I'd be disgusted!)
What was I saying? Oh yes - I made the train, dudes! I may have been in a no-ticket-induced bad mood, but at least I got the early train. I was going to have a rare night home before eight. I may have even made it back in time to tell a goodnight story. (Always bleeding Thomas the Tank Engine, Mark, but what can you do? My little boy is only two. And he's going to keep listening to Thomas until he learns to love him.)
And then... well, do you really need me to tell you? Can you not guess? Shall I give it some colour about sunset over Slough and the mists above Maidenhead and the dark skies through Didcot? Shall I get busy with the adjectives and the adverbs and the conjunctions and the conjugations? Shall I show you my diphthongs and show off my indefinite articles? Shall I? Shall I? How many ways can one describe the experience of sitting in a stationary train while one's life sighs slowly away? How often can I keep stressing the gradual collapse from frustration to resignation that your overly-long journeys are inducing in me?
The answer? Honestly? Quite a few ways, it seems. And remarkably often. It puts me in mind of something I once read, Mark. Let me illustrate.
It puts me in mind of the words of (I think) Martin Amis, Sue. (You remember Martin Amis, don't you? Nippy little left-footer, played on the wing for much of the late 70s and 80s. Handy in the box, by all accounts. Tenacious, tendency to showboat, but capable of game-changing moments all on his own. Crap at football, mind.)
Anyway - he once said that the whole history of literature, writing, words 'n' that, is the story of a gradual downward journey. Back in the day, Mark, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, men wrote about Gods. Exclusively, pretty much. All them Greek fellers, Mark: they loved a bit of it. And it was all people wanted to hear about - Zeus this, Poseidon that, Aphrodite the other. Gods, gods, gods (and the odd demigod). That was the thing.
Race through the years a bit, Bruce Forsyth's on the stage of the Globe introducing hotshot new playwright Billy Shakespeare and it's all about Kings and Queens. Henry IV. Henry V. Whatsischops in Scotland. That one with the hunchback who needed a horse. "Give us Kings!" the mob cries! "We want more Kings! Even made-up Danish ones who mope about for three hours!"
And so it continues: as time passes, the subjects grow ever less lofty: from gods to kings, then great heroes, great lovers, then doctors, lawyers, the middle-classes, the masses... and finally the lowest of the low: the chick-lit heroines. Bridget Jones, Mark. The girls in those appalling Louise Bagshawe books.
Except that's not the lowest is it, Mark? (Not even Louise Bagshawe!) Because I've written something like 25,000 words now on what it's like to look out of a train window. Men used to write about Gods, Mark! And I've devoted 25,000 words to the experience of being bored in a stationary train carriage. What does that make me, Mark?
I'll tell you what it makes me. I fear it may make me the man who marked the death of literature, that's what.
The thought did not add to my good mood on Friday evening, Mark. I'd had a day in which I'd managed to not get Stone Roses tickets, ruin the career of a perfectly good intern simply because she couldn't get me Stone Roses tickets, look ridiculous running through Paddington station and to top it all, come to the realisation that I represent the death of English Literature. Dude. I was bummed out!
I went to bed properly moody, I don't mind telling you. The current Mrs Dom was most discombobulated.
So what am I to do, Sue? How can I regain my spark, Mark?
Should I take affirmative action, somehow? Should I finally start work on that novel I keep talking about? The one that's just waiting on the six-figure advance before I can be bothered beginning? Should I take up poetry once more? (I gave up poetry after The Incident, Mark. Don't ask me about The Incident! We must never discuss The Incident!) Do you think screenwriting might prove to be my saviour? Should I plunge once more, headfirst and thirsty and with mouth agape, into the murky waters of tabloid journalism?
I guess what I'm asking, Mark, is: should I pursue more important and meaningful ways of expressing myself? Rather than moaning to the Managing Director of a failing train company, that is?
Or, and this is a radical idea... should I just keep bullishly banging on and try and pin the blame for the death of English Literature on someone else? Like, for example... Network Rail? Whaddyathink, Sue? Can we communicate that bad boy?
I literally cannot wait for your answer! Tell me! Tell me now!
Au revoir!
Dom
*That's a joke, Sue. I know it's not really beach. It's "Once more unto the bridge," right?
Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford, 21/10/11. Amount of my day wasted: 33 minutes.
Mark! Sue! There you are! Thank goodness for that!
How the blue blazes are you, Mark? What's the word on the streets of Sue-town, er, Sue?
I do hope all is lickety-split and tickety-boo. I do hope all is ship-shape, Bristol fashion and best in show. I do hope this letter finds you, as it does me, in the pink!
I was so pleased to receive your latest response, Mark! I don't mind telling you: it fair made my day. Oh, who am I kidding: it made my week! I'm not ashamed of it, Mark! Every day, I sit poised over my inbox, clicking, reclicking, double-clicking and refreshing, hoping for some small sign you still care. Every day, I wait with held breath, with limbs all a-quiver and heart all a-flutter, desperate for word of your intentions towards me! Every day you don't write feels like a season in purgatory, Mark! A moment without word from you, Sue, is like a lifetime of silence!
So, yes. Thankyou for your last letter! It may not have been the longest, most comprehensive, or even the funniest letter you've ever written me - but that's ok. I know the pressure Sue's under every day, and we can't all communicate brilliantly every single time we communicate, can we? (I know I certainly can't.) The important thing is, you took the time and made the effort to reply to my concerns. For that I am genuinely grateful.
Your train service may be a disgrace, Mark, but you are gentleman enough to reply to my rants and rambles - and I do appreciate it. Please don't think for a moment I don't.
Anyway. Enough of the girly stuff. To business, Mark! To the deeds of the day and the matter in hand! Once more unto the beach!* Sharpen up a fresh pencil, Sue, and prepare to take notes! We've got 33 minutes to get through today. Thirty-three minutes of my time you wasted on Friday night - and 33 minutes I now accordingly intend to waste of your Monday afternoon.
It's a tall order - but we're pretty tall guys, you and I. Together we can do it. (Sue: you're no hobbit yourself. We're all three of us tall guys! Let's all have a big tall high five! Alright! Go Team Tall!)
So, Mark. Sue. Friday was not a good day for me. It should have been a great day! Stone Roses tickets were up for grabs! Two hundred and twenty thousand of the blighters! Surely, thought I, one or two tickets out of 220,000 should be gettable? Surely, thought I, one or two tickets out of 220,000 would be an achievable goal?
I'd even made preparations. I bunged the office intern the promise of a free drink to (wo)man the phones for me until I got in - just on the off-chance that all the tickets should go in the first 14 minutes they went on sale or something outlandish like that. I'd given her my ticketmaster passwords, my email log-ins, my credit card details... in short enough information about me for her to effortlessly thieve my identity and clean out my bank accounts. I told her if she got me four tickets I'd buy her drinks forever. (I didn't actually mean that, of course, but, hey, life is unfair and we all have to learn these lessons the hard way, right?)
She hadn't got tickets by the time I got in to work, Mark. I was forced to sack her on the spot.
And an hour later, after much refreshing of the internets, after repeated re-pressing of the redial button and a great deal of the kind of colourful language that is generally not encouraged in office environments, I remained ticketless. I'm not going to see the Stone Roses play at Heaton Park, Mark. I won't be one of 220,000 middle-aged Mancunian men in fading 20-year-old t-shirts getting drunk and over-excited and singing the wrong words to "I Am The Resurrection". (Or rather, I will be middle-aged and drunk and dressed 20 years out of date and singing badly... but just not in the presence of the Stone Roses when I do so. I'll be at home, like I usually am when I'm doing those things.)
Of course, none of this is your fault - but I feel it's relevant to the letter. Just to paint a picture of my day. Just to get an insight into the fact that I wasn't in the best of moods.
And let us not forget the real tragedy of the situation, Mark, the real victim of the piece. That poor intern, Mark! Because she couldn't get me those tickets, all her years of study and application have gone to waste. It's a crying shame. I feel terrible. Poor girl.
So. I get through the day without further negative incident. But not too much positive either, if I'm honest. And fast-forward eight hours or so and I'm running for a train at London's newly re-ceilinged London Paddington Station. Look at me go! There I am, Sue! Legs pumping! Chest heaving! Arms wheeling! Feet pounding! Watch as I bob and weave through the crowd, shimmying and chicaning past the commuters and tourists, powering down Platform 8 to get a place on the early train home!
It was like Coe vs Ovett in Prague, 1978 Mark! It was like Ovett vs Coe in Moscow 1980! It was exactly like Coe vs Ovett vs Cram in Los Angeles 1984! (That was the year Sebastian Coe used a rude word after he won the 1500 metre Gold, Sue - I'm sure you remember. But it was okay - because he's a nice middle-class boy. If, for example, ooh, I don't know, Wayne Rooney, say, ever used a rude word on the football pitch, it would be an outrage! A scandal! I'd be disgusted!)
What was I saying? Oh yes - I made the train, dudes! I may have been in a no-ticket-induced bad mood, but at least I got the early train. I was going to have a rare night home before eight. I may have even made it back in time to tell a goodnight story. (Always bleeding Thomas the Tank Engine, Mark, but what can you do? My little boy is only two. And he's going to keep listening to Thomas until he learns to love him.)
And then... well, do you really need me to tell you? Can you not guess? Shall I give it some colour about sunset over Slough and the mists above Maidenhead and the dark skies through Didcot? Shall I get busy with the adjectives and the adverbs and the conjunctions and the conjugations? Shall I show you my diphthongs and show off my indefinite articles? Shall I? Shall I? How many ways can one describe the experience of sitting in a stationary train while one's life sighs slowly away? How often can I keep stressing the gradual collapse from frustration to resignation that your overly-long journeys are inducing in me?
The answer? Honestly? Quite a few ways, it seems. And remarkably often. It puts me in mind of something I once read, Mark. Let me illustrate.
It puts me in mind of the words of (I think) Martin Amis, Sue. (You remember Martin Amis, don't you? Nippy little left-footer, played on the wing for much of the late 70s and 80s. Handy in the box, by all accounts. Tenacious, tendency to showboat, but capable of game-changing moments all on his own. Crap at football, mind.)
Anyway - he once said that the whole history of literature, writing, words 'n' that, is the story of a gradual downward journey. Back in the day, Mark, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, men wrote about Gods. Exclusively, pretty much. All them Greek fellers, Mark: they loved a bit of it. And it was all people wanted to hear about - Zeus this, Poseidon that, Aphrodite the other. Gods, gods, gods (and the odd demigod). That was the thing.
Race through the years a bit, Bruce Forsyth's on the stage of the Globe introducing hotshot new playwright Billy Shakespeare and it's all about Kings and Queens. Henry IV. Henry V. Whatsischops in Scotland. That one with the hunchback who needed a horse. "Give us Kings!" the mob cries! "We want more Kings! Even made-up Danish ones who mope about for three hours!"
And so it continues: as time passes, the subjects grow ever less lofty: from gods to kings, then great heroes, great lovers, then doctors, lawyers, the middle-classes, the masses... and finally the lowest of the low: the chick-lit heroines. Bridget Jones, Mark. The girls in those appalling Louise Bagshawe books.
Except that's not the lowest is it, Mark? (Not even Louise Bagshawe!) Because I've written something like 25,000 words now on what it's like to look out of a train window. Men used to write about Gods, Mark! And I've devoted 25,000 words to the experience of being bored in a stationary train carriage. What does that make me, Mark?
I'll tell you what it makes me. I fear it may make me the man who marked the death of literature, that's what.
The thought did not add to my good mood on Friday evening, Mark. I'd had a day in which I'd managed to not get Stone Roses tickets, ruin the career of a perfectly good intern simply because she couldn't get me Stone Roses tickets, look ridiculous running through Paddington station and to top it all, come to the realisation that I represent the death of English Literature. Dude. I was bummed out!
I went to bed properly moody, I don't mind telling you. The current Mrs Dom was most discombobulated.
So what am I to do, Sue? How can I regain my spark, Mark?
Should I take affirmative action, somehow? Should I finally start work on that novel I keep talking about? The one that's just waiting on the six-figure advance before I can be bothered beginning? Should I take up poetry once more? (I gave up poetry after The Incident, Mark. Don't ask me about The Incident! We must never discuss The Incident!) Do you think screenwriting might prove to be my saviour? Should I plunge once more, headfirst and thirsty and with mouth agape, into the murky waters of tabloid journalism?
I guess what I'm asking, Mark, is: should I pursue more important and meaningful ways of expressing myself? Rather than moaning to the Managing Director of a failing train company, that is?
Or, and this is a radical idea... should I just keep bullishly banging on and try and pin the blame for the death of English Literature on someone else? Like, for example... Network Rail? Whaddyathink, Sue? Can we communicate that bad boy?
I literally cannot wait for your answer! Tell me! Tell me now!
Au revoir!
Dom
*That's a joke, Sue. I know it's not really beach. It's "Once more unto the bridge," right?
A new letter from Mr Mark!
Dear Dom
Thank for your emails and I am sorry for the recent delays to your journey.
On the 13th our 08:51 service was late after it suffered a power failure. Our 09:01 was delayed when the windscreen was chipped by a stone and our 19:22 that evening was held up waiting to get into a platform at Reading.
On the 18th a signal on the Badminton line caused problems for many of our morning services. I was pleased when Network Rail were able to fix this quite quickly but the impact on our passengers journey's was very frustrating.
On the 19th another signal problem, at Didcot this time caused further delays.
I really do want us to do better and we'll continue to work hard alongside our colleagues at Network Rail to provide a better service.
Thank you again for your email.
Kind regards
Mark Hopwood
Managing Director
Thank for your emails and I am sorry for the recent delays to your journey.
On the 13th our 08:51 service was late after it suffered a power failure. Our 09:01 was delayed when the windscreen was chipped by a stone and our 19:22 that evening was held up waiting to get into a platform at Reading.
On the 18th a signal on the Badminton line caused problems for many of our morning services. I was pleased when Network Rail were able to fix this quite quickly but the impact on our passengers journey's was very frustrating.
On the 19th another signal problem, at Didcot this time caused further delays.
I really do want us to do better and we'll continue to work hard alongside our colleagues at Network Rail to provide a better service.
Thank you again for your email.
Kind regards
Mark Hopwood
Managing Director
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