42029 – 17:33 Tuesday 6th May

42029

It was a good news journey home, not least because I managed to not cough up a lung on my 100 yard dash for the 17:33 Paignton Service and certainly not least because Carriage B (42029) offered up a lovely double berth into which I could snooze the 30 minutes into Reading.

But the main piece of good news come through round about Slough (yes, that’s right, a sentence with “good news” and “Slough” in it) when Grant (he of my Twitter spat last night) confirmed that not only had he passed on the contents of my Service Improvement suggestions but he’d already received a reply with regards to one of them.

The reply came from someone called Rachel who works in marketing (so she’s no doubt young, attractive and probably uses self-tan) and is apparently responsible for all Season Ticket holder benefits. Rachel delighted in being able to tell me that there were in fact some Season Ticket benefits already in place, more specifically to the tune of 2 weekend tickets as long as I signed up to the marketing email communications. She also teasingly told me that there were some further “surprise and delights” (her words not mine) in the pipeline.

Well all I can say is, bring it on Rachel, I’ll take any number of freebies you can fling at me! If you need any suggestions for the “surprise and delights” (her words not mine) then here’s my top 5:

• A ride in the cab of a HST – Seriously I keep mentioning this and can confirm once again that if FGW would ever give me this I would never ever complain about anything ever again. The 2 toots on the horn are still a deal-breaker though.
• A redesign of the standard class seats which gives each passenger their own armrest.
• The ability to turn off the Express Café announcements for the duration of my journey. I really don’t need to know about the porridge.
• The right to give a dead-leg to anyone in the quiet carriage who makes more noise than the rustle of a newspaper.
• More hats for FGW staff. Not strictly a service improvement suggestion but I do believe that a smart peaked cap will put a spring in the step of all FGW personnel.

44009 – 06:57 Friday 2nd May

44009

Thank goodness for Friday trains and their surplus of seats that allowed me to luxuriate in a double seat in Carriage A and allow all the other passengers to avoid my hangover breath and hangover face.

Everything was going swimmingly, I was catching up on some much needed sleep and the other passengers were managing to evade my ugly mug, until we approached the outskirts of Slough and ground to a screeching halt. It turned out that there was, according to FGW anyway, signalling problems but this was being “robustly challenged” by the rest of the commuting twitteratti who were claiming it was down to a broken down train stuck in the station.

What wasn’t helping matters was that poor old Jo, who was manning the FGW twitter feed rather like General Custer guarding the fort at Little Big Horn, was also reporting other broken down trains stretching from Taunton to Newbury and from Castle Cary to Reading. It looked very much like @FGWDodgy_Norman ‘s orchestrated maintenance disaster plan had come to fruition and his timed “spanners in the works” were exploding exactly on cue.

When all was said and done, when the dust had settled and when Jeremy had said “at the end of the day”, I was 9 minutes late into Paddington which I guess for a Friday and without the energy to join in the FGW Twitter kicking isn’t too bad.