Today we had to go to London to pick up our visas from the Swiss embassy. Being late we missed the train at Mortimer so we so we drove the 25 minute trip to Reading to catch the train into Paddington. On platform 5 we waited with many people it was peak hour, we stood there amongst hundreds. Suddenly some short stocky railway worker bellowed out that a train for Paddington was leaving in three minutes from platform 9. So the mass exodus started, we tramped like a herd of cattle under platform 7 and 8 and up onto platform 9. There before us was a train but all its doors were shut, and no one was allowed into its empty carriages. We all waited like idiots to get on. Next their is an announcement over the intercom saying the fast train to Paddington that is 45 minutes late is now at platform 5……….no I am not joking so again we all made the mass exodus shuffling squeezing and bumping our way back. All the time I was thinking that this was so much like a comedy sketch.
Standing room only on this train and I got a spot just inside the doorway in front of a smelly bin, my shoes sticking to the disgustingly filthy carpet directly underneath. I smiled and giggled to myself making my fellow sardine travellers a little concerned, because I thought how funny it all was, was it a ploy to keep us all occupied or is British rail really that incompetent?.
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