42042 & 42365 – 18:03 & 18:37 Wednesday 10th September

42042 & 42365

It was a very FGW day today.

First of all it was that red ringed and highlighted day of the year that means I get to spend over £4,000 pounds on a tiny slip of paper that allows me to travel between home and dirty old London town everyday for the next year. Remember kids, the ticket is for the journey, not for the seat.

This mucky deal was carried out by the best thing to happen to Thatcham Station since they repainted the platform shelters, Nice Peter, who made it the fastest 4 grand I’d ever spent but at least I was safely ensconced on the 06:57 and started the new travelling year with an on time arrival at Paddington.

What wasn’t on time is the 15 working days it took FGW to reply to an enquiry I’d sent in after the 2 hours I had to spend in a field just outside Theale. (Remember this fun episode fans?) What I was enquiring about was I’d heard that FGW produces letters for passengers to give to their employees when their time-keeping is called into question. As my three month review was due on that very same day I felt that being armed with such a letter might be prudent.

Alas what I got back from a certain Nigel D’souza wasn’t quite what I expected and leaving aside the fact he hadn’t bothered to sign it and the quite bizarre staple stamped in it in the middle of the page, there was no way I’d have presented this to any employee, even if I had been working for Fred Karno’s army, mostly because of the confusing sentence that read “…feel so let down especially you get late to work.”

I know it’s a cheap shot to take the micky out of one single missing word (God only knows how many mistakes are littered throughout this blog) but had this been included along with a signature and a properly presented letter I may have found it easier to believe Nigel’s ascertain that he was “genuinely sorry”, and hadn't just printed off a boiler-plate reply, shoved it in an envelope and was probably first in line for the canteen’s shepherd’s pie lunch as normal.

Still, he’s made the blog so that’ll be nice for him!

Tonight I got 42042, a Carriage D on the Penzance Service and 42365, a Carriage B on the Frome Service. I had a seat on both. Bargain!

42068 & 42039 – 07:57 & 19:03 Monday 28rd July

42068 & 42039

OK, let’s get the trains out the way with first.

I caught the 07:57 from Reading into Paddington this morning and sat in Carriage B, 42068, next to one of the most ungracious bag-seat hogger people I’ve ever come across.

On the way home, I was on the 19:03 to Plymouth and somehow managed to bag a double seat in Carriage D, 42039 whilst everyone else seemed to be sitting on each other’s laps.

Now the observant amongst you will have instantly thought to yourselves, “but hey, BGC, why on earth were you taking a morning train from Reading? And 07:57, that’s usually the time you’re in London and looking fabulous on the tube?”

And the simple answer to this is every commuter’s nightmare – you arrive at the station and every single train is marked as “Cancelled” or “Delayed” and the only thing you can hear is FGW’s unapologetic pre-recorded apology recording.

The reasons behind this almost daily debacle range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Apparently there were signalling issues in Newbury (honestly, at the moment it’s like all the stations are taking turns in having this sort of problem) but also a dead body had been found in a tunnel between Bristol and Bath.
And who told me of this rather macabre discovery?

Why none other than Nice Peter, the shaggy and rather scruffy ticket office man at Thatcham station.

Peter is a lovely bloke and quite obviously doesn’t get the support he deserves from the rest of the FGW rumbling machine. Firstly whenever there is any sort of issue he leaves the protection of his bullet proof glass box and wanders up and down the platform explaining the situation as he knows it to the waiting passengers. He also addresses us all as “gang” – “Hi gang, ‘fraid to say that I’ve got nothing coming through for the next hour at least” he’ll say with the tail of his crumpled shirt hanging out.

He also speaks to every person approaching his ticket box and tells them what’s going on. So it was rather strange to hear immediately after him telling someone that as far as he knew there were no trains and there were busses on the way, the warning claxon of the barriers being lowered on the level crossing. Turns out that there was a rogue turbo on its way to Reading that we could all jump on and at least continue our disrupted journeys from there. Poor Peter, trying his hardest and keeping everyone as calm as possible and yet kept in the dark just as much as the rest of us mushrooms.

I was somewhat disappointed there to see then that my tweet in praise of Nice Peter not be “favourited” or “re-tweeted” by @FGW.

Mind you, they were very very busy, giving terse replies, such as this one, to their beloved customers.

EXCELSIOR!

Oh, last minute P.S. – I’ve just been followed by @FGWBPW, the Ambassadors from Bristol. Oi, Brizzle Ambassadors, send Peter a nice purple waistcoat will you? He’d be even better talking to his “gang” with his shirt under control!