The national rail inquiry service told me that a suitable train left Totnes for London at 6:37pm. Thank you very much, I said. Later, when I arrived at the station full of hope and expectation, this information turned out to be false. The train was actually scheduled to leave at 6:57pm. But that's OK. Anyone can make a mistake. I make them all the time.
At 6:57pm, however, the 6:57 service failed to appear. At 7:02pm the one-man band in charge of the station announced over the tannoy that the train was going to be 25 minutes late owing to a driver failing to report for work at Plymouth.
Normally this would hardly have mattered-but I had a connection to make at Euston in London. I was booked on the Midnight Express, a weekly coach excursion to Amsterdam for cannabis smokers, which leaves from the Royal Castle pub beside Euston station every Friday at 10:30pm. I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend in the infamous coffee houses; maybe tottering around to the Van Gogh Museum, if it was open. If the train remained 25 minutes late all the way to London, three hours away, it would be cutting things a bit fine, but I might just make it. But when the train finally came teetering around the bend, it was 40 minutes late, and I had good reason to be worried.
The man who sold me my ticket (and made the tannoy announcement) crossed the footbridge with a rolled up green flag under his arm, ready to wave us on our way. Did he think the train would make up some of the time? "Oh yes," he said, and fixed his features into an expression suggesting wisdom, confidentiality and sympathy. It was so palpably insincere that I wanted to laugh. He slammed the door behind me and waved his flag. Later I put the same question to the conductor when he came sauntering down the carriage asking for tickets. "No," he said, flatly.
I tried to read the autobiography I had with me-Mr Nice by Howard Marks. For a man who has spent the past 30 years continuously smoking hashish (apart from spells in various American penitentiaries), and who presumably wrote the entire book enveloped in a fug of resinous smoke, his precise recall of events and conversations is truly amazing. Anxiety about my coach connection made me unable to concentrate for long on Marks's story, however, and I went to find the conductor to ask for a complaints form. I found him leaning on the counter of the buffet, deep in conversation with a very camp buffet bar steward.
"No disrespect or anything like that, sir," he said after hearing my anxieties. "But really, you have only got yourself to blame."
"How's that then?"
"Well, if I was in your position I would have left more time between connections." The camp bar steward looked me up and down and sadly nodded in agreement.
"So it's foolish to rely on the trains at all, then?"
"Oh, I didn't say that, sir."
To make me feel better, he told me about one of his trains that was so late-he called it "late late," as if there was now a category of train lateness that was quite extraordinary-that an elderly couple in first class had missed the QE2. "A world cruise it was-they had us for thousands," he added. The camp steward nodded sadly again: he had heard about that one, too.
As I couldn't think of anything worse than missing a world cruise owing to a cock-up on the trains, I returned to my seat feeling better, counting myself fortunate that I was merely intending to go to Holland. Later the conductor came to my seat and presented me with a complaints form. He pointed out that he was authorised to give them out only if the train was over one hour late; but in my case he would make an exception. Thank you very much, I said.
We pulled into Paddington 35 minutes late. By the time I got out of the cab at Euston the Midnight Express had gone. One of the reasons for calling it the Midnight Express, I suppose, is that it doesn't hang about. Inside the Royal Castle they were ringing the bell for last orders. I thought I might as well go back home.
The Circle Line tube back to Paddington was packed with drunks. At Paddington one of the ticket windows was still open. The lady behind the glass confided that she had heard a rumour that they were assembling a night-train bound for Plymouth on platform ten. If I hurried, she said, I might just be able to catch it. Running like a man pursued by demons, I found platform ten, saw a train there and flung myself at it. However, the train didn't set off for another hour and three quarters, because of staff shortages.
In the antiquity of the carriages and the sight of passengers asleep on the floor and tables, the Night Riviera service is a bit like travelling on a troop train. Also there seems to be a general amnesty for smokers, and no attempt is made to check anybody's ticket. The buffet bar is open all night, mainly patronised by convivial tramps. Unable to sleep, I read about the further adventures of Howard Marks; while in the seat opposite an enormous man wearing a dinner jacket and a loosened bow-tie slept quietly and innocently, his chins on his chest. Then I too went to sleep-and woke up at dawn having overshot my stop by 60 miles.
