Training.

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   Training with a difference ….. not a trudge in sight!

The BBC have just wasted another half hour of the licence payers fee by banging on and on about the time keeping deficiencies of the British railway system. I have to confess that I do not understand why the railways are highlighted for particular denegration. I suspect it might be a long forgotten resentment against the railways for starting our obsession with time. Before the railways, it did not matter one jot whether one town’s time was the same, minutes or hours different from any other town. But the expansion of the railway system meant that the same time frame had to be adopted throughout the country. Clocks had to be synchronised. And with the standardisation of time keeping came the establishment of routine for all aspects of life and the strait jacket that this imposed on the populace. So our obsession with the time keeping of our trains is a subliminal reaction to events from 1840? It is ironical that it was the railways which demanded this synchronisation for which they now suffer so much public approbation … so like the hands on a clock, what goes around comes around?

If an air passenger arrives on time, or several minutes late, or a few minutes early, it is of no consequence as hours are spent disembarking, retrieving baggage and slogging through customs.

Does my wife ever moan when my trudge several minute more than expected? Well, she does actually!

Cross country coaches rarely arrive on time (ref Passenger Annual Report 2007). Motorway hold ups, traffic congestion, and road works all put obstacles in the way of arriving on time. The time lost in transit is par for the course. Never any public outcry, though. Trains run on a limited number of tracks, each engine depending on the time keeping of the train in front on the same line. One problem with signalling, a power failure or a simple loss of good time keeping by the preceding train and there is a cascade effect on all other journeys, such is the inter dependency of any railway system.

If you can afford the quids to take a taxi, after hailing the cab do you demand an e.t.a. from the cabbie before agreeing the fare?

Local buses are at the mercy of local road conditions and sticking to the timetable is often impossible for a whole driver shift. A few moans and groans from the locals is inevitably highlighted in the local rag to help the editor to fill a few column inches. But no one is genuinely concerned.

And if you travel by boat, what is an hour here or there in a mega journey time?

So its forget about the planes and boats and buses and coaches and get the boot into training (Virgin or Great Western …)!! Both feet first.

                          Colin