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Life in the slow lane

Another un-eventful day on National Express. The current ad floating about on the trains says “National Express – Same Seats – only Cheaper” – depicting a very relaxed customer who USED to pay £14.75 from London to York NOW paying a mere £10.00 for the privilage – what a bargain!

I’m writing this in notepad as the crappy wi-fi only works when it wants to and never for more than a few minutes at a time. You have to wonder why, on the main line from Newcastle to London they can’t get their act together. It’s not as if the line is new and they haven’t had time to get it working yet!! NOT that you can get much serious work done on the train because they insist on blasting the Tannoy every 5 minutes to tell you about having the right tickets, to apologise for the delay due to fluff on the line, remind you that the meal service is running at half mast due to problems with the air conditioning and how you should respect the quiet coach and turn your phone off – not that mobile phones are even REMOTELY as annoying as the constant announcements on the tannoy. I complained to the ticket collector about the constant dribble coming from the Tannoy and he finds it annoying too!!

After leaving a meeting slightly earlier than expected I got on the 1.30pm from Lonon to Newcastle. Seemed like a good time for lunch so rather than buy some inflated-cost pastry at the station I thought I’d have an inflated-cost sandwich on the train. The £10 offer it transpires is only on a good day, with the wind, booked in advance. My one-way ticket to Newcastle cost a wopping £175 – enough for 2 or 3 round trips to France…. anyway, for all that, they were out of the only decent sandwich they do. If that was the service in first class, Lord help coach A !!! I settled for a packet of crisps. Gone are the hand-made-by-grannies crisps of GNER and in with Walkers lacklustre varieties – I handed over £1 and I heard the attendant mutter something about 5p, which I thought was ridiculously cheap for a packet of crisps – of course that was the change. 95p for a packet of crisps!! No wonder they can offer the WIFI for free – they should through in a massage!!

Signed, grumpy old man. Of course it could be said that if we were all a little less forgiving, rail companies would not get away with this crap.

Attention train crew…. disabled passenger alert….

Attention train crew…. disabled passenger alert….

Attention train crew…. disabled .

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