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.