Diary – 9 August 2003

It’s no good complaining. The rail network inhabits the wrong kind of universe. If the sun shines for more than two days, the network goes down. You can’t argue with science. In the last heatwave I travelled back to London from Brighton in a train whose air-conditioning had given up under the strain. I rang the customer-services office to complain that passengers couldn’t even open the windows. Less than a fortnight later I got a letter from South Central. It was not an apology. It was a patronising explanation of the principles of air-conditioning. It doesn’t work, see, if you open the windows. The point is, however, that if it is not working, the only way to get some air is to open the windows, or to break them. A guard with a window key would have come in handy, but there was no guard on the train. As privatisers will wearily tell you, advanced technology has made the guard redundant. How I yearn for the days of nationalised railways, when the air-conditioning did not break down – because there was none – and when there were not only guards but porters. All you had to do was cry ‘pawtah!’ when your train arrived at King’s Cross and a forelock-tugging man in uniform – salt of the earth – was instantly at your side, and glad of a sixpenny tip.

Cornwall is the fashionable place to be right now, whether you are a toff or a methadone-swigging hippy. My wife and son are there again, and again without me. I can’t warm to the place. Its narrow lanes are jammed with Renault Espaces and caravans, the food is rubbish, the architecture is uniformly ugly, and – though I hate stereotyping as much as the next man – the locals sometimes give the impression of being not only stupid and cunning but grasping too.