12 March 2012. Letter 93

Dear Mark and Sue

Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 12/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: seven minutes.

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!

It’s lovely isn’t it, Sue? It gladdens the heart. And there’s more! There’s more to make the heart still gladder!

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?)

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!

(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.)

Well done, the both of you!

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?

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?

It wasn’t any of that, after all!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

Because once the buffet cars are converted, they will ensure that… um, they will be directly responsible for… er, they will…

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?

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?

Au revoir!

Dom

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?

8 March 2012. Letter 92

Dear Mark and Sue

Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 8/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: eight minutes.

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!

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.)

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.

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.

Mark! We’ve got to stop the pain and put the delays on hold!*

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.

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!

Was it congestion again? Another signalling issue? Was there a loss of power?

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?)

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”.)

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.

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.

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?

Au revoir!

Dom

*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!

**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.

A really REALLY long* reply from Mark!

*Only kidding - it's rather short, actually.

Dear Dom

Thank you for your email regarding the delay you experienced on Tuesday evening.

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.

Kind regards

Mark Hopwood
Managing Director

6 March 2012. Letter 91

Dear Mark and Sue

Re: 18.51 FGW service from Paddington to Oxford 6/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: eight minutes.

Hey Mark! Heyyyy Sue!

(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!)

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?

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!

Anyway. Enough enthusiasm. Enough with the exclamation marks already! Stop it with the screamers! Let’s pause.

Let’s – oh, sorry, we’re still pausing.

[…PAUSE…]

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.

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.

To business then! And enough with the monkey business!

(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.

Poor little monkeys. Whatever shall become of them?

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.

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.)

Sorry, what? Oh yes. To business! To business without all these exclamations!

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.

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.

(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.)

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!

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!

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!

Oops. Got a bit carried away with the old exclamation marks again there, Mark. Sorry about that.

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.

What’s that you say? Put it on the slate? Do I have a choice?

Au revoir!

Dom

A word from your Managing Director

Dear Dom

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.

On Friday our 08:06 service arrived into Paddington 8 minutes behind schedule due to a similar incident involving another late running service .

Both incidents were disappointing and I apologise for your late arrival into London.

Kind regards

Mark Hopwood
Managing Director

2 March 2012. Letter 90

Dear Mark and Sue

Re: 08.06 FGW service from Oxford to Paddington 2/3/12. Amount of my day wasted: nine minutes.

Mark! Sue! What’s up pussycats? What’s moving, groovers? What’s shakin’, Daddios?

Are you cool? Are we cool? Is everything feeling groovy?

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.

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!

(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!

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.

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.

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.

Sue: it was the only interview I’ve ever done where my interview subject actually walked out on me.

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.

Mark, it was a joke! He was supposed to laugh!

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!)

Anyway. Sorry. Bit distracted there. What was I saying? Oh yes! Oh Lordy, the troubles I’ve had!

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.

Mark! It’s Friday now and I’m still upset that Davy Jones has died.

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.

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.

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.)

Ah, the Monkees, Sue. They’ve made millions happy, and now they’ve made me sad.

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.

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?

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!

Au revoir!

Dom

Stop! Hopwood time!

Dear Dom

Thank you for your email.

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.

Kind regards

Mark Hopwood
Managing Director