It is a good idea to use a different language.Is an overnight train more glamorous? Even when you are wearing your husband’s raincoat while carrying a car seat encrusted with oats, a six-month baby in a carrier, and an Apple core that is slowly fermenting in the side pocket on your backpack?
I don’t know. I love travelling by train – even now, when it’s as comprehensively bad as British rail privatisation has made it for, well, just about everyone save a few shareholders and the CEO of Pumpkin Cafe. What about travelling at night time? The whisper of romance from the buffet, the flashing sunset through the vestibule or a white-sheeted bed that you can call yours? I love it even more.
You would have seen me eating shortbread in the customer lounge 14 minutes before I was invited onto the night train to Penzance. I was drinking apple juice and consuming 7,000 calories within 15 minutes, as if the station of Paddington were about to explode. Luckily, it wasn’t to prevent a specific act of terror. I was simply getting my money’s value because night trains can be expensive. My husband and son were able to travel to Italy by rail and return for less money than I paid to cross the Tamar with Great Western Rail.
You can’t. But, on the other hand, how much is it worth to wash your shoes in a cabin with a basin that’s about the same size as an understairs coatrack but has more lighting options than the entire house I live in? You can still enjoy your holiday and be offered a shower in Truro at five o’clock in the morning? To pee in the night outside Plymouth while driving at 80mph. You get porridge brought to your front door by a woman dressed in a bottle green polyester uniform, then she looks out of the window before muttering ‘Erth? Heaven. As Philip Larkin said, most likely on the 21.19 British Rail to Hull service: “Here, in unfettered existence, facing the sun, untalkative and out of reach.”
