Diary – 14 January 2016

Whatever you do, don’t allow your six-year-old to be caught short at Crewkerne station. With the rain pouring and the wind howling, my daughter needed the loo. But it was locked. And no staff anywhere to be seen. So I pressed the ‘Help’ button on one of those machines that have replaced stationmasters. ‘How can I assist you?’ responded a warm South Asian voice. ‘Er, we need someone to open the loo at Crewkerne.’ ‘Where exactly are you?’ she came back, sounding lost. ‘You know, in Dorset, after Yeovil. On the Exeter line. How far away is the help centre?’ I was thinking Bristol, maybe Swindon. ‘Oh, we are in Mumbai,’ she declared. I am left with two thoughts: first, the extraordinary reach of globalisation; and, secondly, the contempt South-West Trains has for its customers if they think they can safely operate platforms in Wessex from Maharashtra.

Svelte Rohan Silva, once a sorcerer’s apprentice in Steve Hilton’s Downing Street, now an east London tech-preneur, is worried about the decline in artists’ studio space in London.