A satisfied customer writes

13 Chestnut Grove
Upper Westwood
Wiltshire
March 2007


FAO: Customer Services Team
Freepost SWB40576
Plymouth
PL4 6ZZ


Dear Customer Services Team,

I am writing to congratulate your company on its ‘Travelling in Time’ First Great Western train experience. This service is a vividly realised recreation of the old diesel locomotive service of the 1950s that serviced now abandoned rural routes. The startlingly accurate post-war period detail really gives the impression that visitors have stepped back in time to a dilapidated public transport system in a ration-book Britain just recovering from the ravages of the Second World War.

I have enjoyed the experience so much that I have made the long, leisurely journey to the south coast a regular part of my week. It gives me plenty of time to enjoy the unspoilt Wiltshire countryside through authentically grime-stained windows, with the train sometimes approaching the speed of a cantering horse. Furthermore, the ugly livery of modern train services is always tastefully obscured by inches of mud so that passengers can more easily imagine themselves in the grey gloom of an earlier industrial age.

The station I travel from is blissfully calm by the river at 6.15am and this morning I appreciated the opportunity to spend an extra twenty-five minutes gazing at the moon through the mist and chatting with a fellow traveller about your famous ‘living museum’ tour service. I notice that the information point has been disconnected to enhance the sensation of returning to a bygone age, (when telephones were still something of a novelty) as the telephone number given to report a fault appears to be disconnected too.

On my return each evening, I also enjoy being crammed into two carriages at Southampton like some child evacuee from the Blitz. It definitely brings out the sense of community in people sadly lacking on other train lines, with Great Western commuters chatting about the novelty and surprises of their daily journeys. Have you ever thought about installing gas lights on your trains? Perhaps you should insist on period dress, or at least provide flat caps and bowlers for commuters to look the part. You could, I imagine, sell the whole package to foreign tourists, who often complain about the vanishing heritage of this country.

I have also enjoyed your steam service (at least I assume it was an early steam engine by the speed of the carriage) travelling up on the Weymouth line. As you know, the original Orient Express still passes along the line to Bristol from time to time, but the terrifying speed of that locomotive alarms many citizens in the West Country more used to the gentler pace of your trains.

Sadly, the Virgin or South West services from Southampton to Bournemouth rudely propels me into the late 20th century on the second leg of my journey. Please do not think of introducing such a vulgar, fast and timely service to the West Country. We have quite enough visitors as it is.

Kind regards,

A passenger

Spring coming

I’m travelling on an overcrowded train from Southampton to Trowbridge. As usual there are only two carriages so everyone is crammed together giving it the atmosphere of a bad-tempered free festival. There’s a kind of arms race of ipods – you need to have some music to drown out the maddening tinny beat of your neighbour’s earphones or Gameboy. The train crawls north-west stopping at a succession of small rural stations and as people board the accents become more ludicrously west country by the mile.

If you peer through the mud-flecked windows you can make out waterlogged fields, leafless trees, the odd bloom of daffodils and blossom. It’s been a mild winter and I think our blood has now thickened enough to withstand temperatures below 10 degrees Centigrade without bursting into tears.

Yesterday as everyday I went for a morning walk with the dogs. Sarah took me on a ‘short cut’. She had discovered between Freshford and Westwood, a lovely hidden hamlet called Iford. It was drizzling and we were fully equipped with tall wellies, raincoats and hats, but the entrance to one field was so horrendously muddy and waterlogged that my boot got stuck and I lost my balance and started to fall over. The prospect of lying lengthwise in foot thick mud was an alarming one, so in desperation I flung myself on top of Nog who was crushed by my bulk into the waterlogged field. I, thankfully, only sustained only a one-third immersion in the Readybrek-like ooze. Nog was very good about it – not even whimpering once at the indignity. He watched me quietly as I stood dripping, while Sarah doubled up with laughter.

Spring is almost upon us and we have survived our first winter. We are very pale, podgy and a bit grumpy, but we are alive. It’s been kind of fun at times – the sheer novelty of getting soaking wet, or freezing cold. That novelty will no doubt wear off as the years go by.

When the sun does shine, and it does on occasion in this part of Britain, it is a fantastic feeling. You sit and close your eyes with the slight warming sensation playing about your cheeks. It’s like a sense returning that you forgot you had. So pity those British tourists who you see roasting themselves dark red by the hotel pools in Dubai. They have been sadly deprived.

The slight blot on the horizon is I apparently have a wisdom tooth coming through. After making around fifty calls to find an NHS dentist (there may be a dozen or so left in Britain) I finally managed to get an appointment. They confirmed that the nagging pain I have was a wisdom tooth and have booked me in to the hospital to have it removed. When I asked how long that might take they said around six months. Hmmm...