40104 – 18:37 Wednesday 7th May

40104

As good old Victor Meldrew might have exclaimed, “I don’t bloody believe it!” – Tonight I leapt about the 17:49 Worcester Service and immediately sat down in Carriage E, 42055, and it only goes and turns out that I’ve already been in this carriage!

What makes this even more annoying is that the journey to Reading was interesting enough to have a couple of stories to tell. Well I say interesting, what I really mean is annoying as the first thing that greeted me was the same bloody chap as a couple of days ago speaking to his kids on the phone. This time though it wasn’t a rehash of what the little brat had had for tea but rather a quick run through of today’s homework…..”and how many trees did you have to draw? Mmm, and did you do them neatly?”…..as I say, you can’t fault his commitment but I wish he’d do it before he leaves work or from the privacy of the toilet.

Then I ended up sitting next to little Miss First Big Job who immediately rang a friend as soon as she sat down to have a good old moan about her day at work….”and then it was like, and I was like, so she was all like and I mean no-one was like, so it was all like that in the end.” On and on and on and on and on, until I wished I’d bought shares in the word “like”. 

And then of course she entered cliché phase, “and so I was like to Alisha (yes of course, she couldn’t just be Emma could she) and she was like back to me, but Lissy (quite, it wouldn’t be Claire would it) you’re so not like that. I think I need to work in a place like a university and not like a secondary school.”

Why not try working in a place like a workplace! ARRRRGGGHH.

It was about this time I received a tweet from lovely Jo who had just checked in to tell me that apparently whilst Rachel from marketing is young and attractive, she doesn’t use self-tan. So that’s me told! And whilst on the medium of the tweet I spotted this from @_Funnynames_ which had me wetting myself……much to Lissy’s disgust as it disturbed her moaning…….like.

It was quite a relief to get to Reading and swap to the Frome Service and Carriage 40104 which is a Carriage F and my very first of this type of carriage. Obviously it was one of those ones with ½ Standard Class and ½ buffet rather than ½ 1st Class and ½ buffet which raises the question as to how on earth I’m going to capture the 1st Class Carriages……….answers on a postcard to the usual address.

44081 – 06:57 Wednesday 7th May

44081

After last night’s revelations about the “surprise and delights” (her words not mine) on the way to all of us Season Ticket holders today’s journey was never going to live up to those high standards……and indeed it didn't.

Highlights were sitting next to the rambler who wears a flat cap and Robert the Train Manager who responded to Mr Flat Cap and mine proffering of our tickets for inspection with a “thanks gents….”

That is all. Have a good day everyone……..

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.

44074 – 06:57 Tuesday 6th May

44074

A lovely long sunny bank holiday might do wonders for the soul and for the niggling DIY jobs that have been put off for the last six months, but it doesn’t do so much for progress on the Carriage Capture. Nor does a duplicate carriage on Friday evening which meant it wasn’t until this morning with Carriage A on the 06:57 that I was able to get things going again with 44074 captured and safely put in the bag.

There was nothing to report on the journey apart from my neighbour’s thigh pressing into mine which wouldn’t be a problem apart from the fact that he had a beard and hissing headphones, but what is to report is the twitter spat I allowed myself to be foolishly dragged into yesterday evening. Perhaps it was watching Ronnie O’Sullivan allow the chance of a 6th World Title slip from his grasp that had made me so peevish or perhaps it was just spotting this self-pitying tweet from @FGW:

Don't you understand? It's not us, it's all your fault!

Now I know that the limit of 140 characters isn't exactly the ideal basis for getting across nuanced points but there really is a list of things that the FGW should never try to do on the medium of tweet (for details of this list please leave a comment on the blog) and unfortunately Grant’s no doubt well intentioned message here just came across as a pathetically winging comment that seems to suggest that any lack of improvement in the service is the passenger’s fault.

The fact is however that I have fedback service improvement suggestions to FGW on more than one occasion but have so far never received any sort of reply or acknowledgement from a manager with responsibilities in that particular area of the business. I have had recognition of receipt of my emails and I have had further discussion on these points with members of the communications team but as for having some sort of tip of the hat in my direction from someone from the upper echelons……..well as I say, their stove-pipe top hats are staying firmly attached to their heads.

Now the phrase “Service Improvement” is a curious one in itself because in the three years I’ve been a constant commuter, I have seen not one single improvement. That’s not to say of course there hasn’t been good service, there has been, plenty of it in fact but things don’t actually get any better. Service levels seem to be strangely circular with period of months with no issues whatsoever followed by a similar period where everything seems to fall apart at the seams. But none of this has anything to do with “service improvement”; there aren’t more trains, the fares haven’t gone down, there’s no new facilities, there’s no new choices. The standard of an average journey is the same as it was in, in my case anyway, 2011. Now I’m sure if FGW were directly challenged on this they would quote the new Reading Station or the plans for the roll out of WiFi (really? Wifi by 2014? That’s nothing to be proud of….) but all of this is either the work or investment of other partners or too little a lot lot lot too late. If I'm wrong here of course, let me know......tell me of the extra services, tell me of the new trains that run all night, explain how my season ticket also enables me to a free coffee, go into detail about the new seats with extra room, wax lyrical about the new ticket offices and their extended opening hours, sing from the rooftops about the additional work with your partners which has seen a decrease in the percentage of infrastructure failures........my ears, unlike the door to Marky Mark's inbox, always open.

Anyway to cut a long and drawn out twitter conversation short, what’s happened now is that I have emailed a couple of service improvement suggestions to Grant directly and he has promised to chase these up and ensure that I do get a response from someone appropriate. (Not that Grant himself has as yet acknowledged the mail yet, which is curious considering one of the points here is the subject of acknowledgement….) So the clock is ticking Grant and if anyone wants to follow my progress on this mission the hashtag you’ll need is #NotJasonNess 

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.

42204 – 22:45 Thursday 1st May

42204

It was a late night journey home for a tired and emotional BGC after another classic Oranges and Lemons tour of the watering holes near to Barbican. The 22:45 Swansea service was my chosen chariot home and I managed to get a double seat and spent the next 30 minutes slumped next to the window in Carriage B talking to myself.

The only factors that got me through the wait at the building site hellhole that is Reading Station until the last Newbury bound Turbo was a very fine cappuccino from the finest coffee shop this side the Urals, Tutti Frutti and spotting these two fashion assassins who only have themselves to blame for getting tweeted.

44079 – 06:57 Thursday 1st May

44079

BGC! BGC! BGC! We thought you’d gone and left us alone and adrift with no idea of what was going on with the Carriage Capture!

No, no, fans, friends and fudge-packers, no such luck, I am still here, live and kicking and continuing the pursue the greatest waste of time since Bobby Charlton found a comb and said, “hey, actually if I do it like this it looks like I've still got a full head of hair.”

So where was I for the last two days? Well luxuriating under the misnomer of “Working from Home” whilst the various factions on either side of the great Tube debate tried to trash out whether it’s a good idea to shut or the ticket offices or not.

Anyway, I was back in force today aboard 44079, Carriage A of the 06:57 into Paddington. Apparently yesterday all hell broke loose when there was a broken down train in the Bermuda Triangle of rail travel otherwise known as Maidenhead. So on the downside, had I been travelling yesterday I would have had something interesting to tell but I guess in the upside at least my journey today was undisturbed and on-time. So the blog’s loss is BGC’s gain. #winwin