I was unlucky enough to be needing to get from Fareham to Southampton Airport yesterday afternoon. I arrived at FRM a bit after 4pm to find nothing running towards Southampton until after 5pm. I considered taking a delayed Southern service, which would have required changing at Eastleigh, but decided against it since the state of services from Eastleigh to SOA seemed unclear. I ended up taking a delayed GWR service to SOU, leaving FRM at 17:05. Unfortunately this was old stock with no air con, but a nice young man did pass through the train handing out free bottles of Buxton spring water, which was appreciated.
On arriving at SOU the next train to SOA turned out to be a delayed, and tiny, two-car SWT unit which I chose not to cram in to. Not too long after that an only-slightly-delayed SWT Waterloo service turned up, and I settled down in its quiet coach only to find myself sat behind a loud* young American woman who had been nattering on her phone as she boarded the train, and continued to do so despite plonking herself down in the quiet coach. Apparently obvious to the disapproving stares and suppressed tutting of her fellow passengers, she proceeded to explain to her telephonic interlocutor that the train "sucked" - apparently because, despite being comfortable, not crowded, and pleasantly cool on a boiling hot day, it had the temerity to have lost all of ten minutes as it negotiated its way through the surrounding turmoil, and then compounded this by passing through tunnels which of course interrupted her critically important f*ckw*tted inanities. Ironically, at one point she launched in to a protracted discourse about how rational and reasonable it was that she rarely took much notice of what other people thought. I ended up rather sadistically enjoying her increasing frustration at having her pointless and antisocial conversation repeatedly disrupted. I must be a bad person.
The thing that I found really frustrating was the total absence of announcements as to what was going on, when services were actually likely to turn up etc - and the furtive reluctance of any of the hi-vis-clad personnel to engage with passengers. Not on the trains: for all that the situation was clearly quite a mess, I found the station signs and announcements adequately informative, and the staff very helpful. No, this was at the airport, where the departure screens had frozen at about five thirty, and no-one seemed able or willing to explain why I was still waiting in the departure lounge at 20:35 for a flight scheduled to depart at 20:30. (I also got pulled aside at the security check, but that was my own fault: I had forgotten about the free bottle of water, which I had tucked away unfinished in my rucksack and put through the scanner!)
When my flight did eventually turn up, I noticed that the aircraft bore the slogan: "Faster than road or rail". I actually got home around 11pm. Google Maps says you can drive from Fareham to Edinburgh in six and a half hours. Hmm...
* One of those people who seems never to have grasped the fundamental idea of the telephone as a medium for communication: the other person may be a long way away but you don't have to shout.
