The deranged world of Virgin trains

Twelve minutes till the train. That had seemed like quite enough time as I approached the Virgin ticket machine. Two tickets, London King’s Cross to Durham: a 40-second job, then perhaps a coffee. I had felt, as I so often don’t, like a responsible mother and wife, comfortably in charge of logistics. Screen one set me back a bit. Virgin had changed the layout. Where was Durham? On screen two I felt the first rising bubbles of panic. Where was the option to buy an open return? The minutes floated by. Nothing became clearer. I felt the sort of lonely despair the old must feel when technology overtakes them. I said to my husband: ‘You do it.’ But after a while he said: ‘I can’t!’ We both looked hopefully at the man by the neighbouring machine who just shrugged. ‘I can’t work it out either,’ he said, ‘and I’m a website designer.