Perfect timing; I was just reading about how Network Rail’s employees are going to share 55 million quid’s worth of bonuses when the phone rang. It was a friend (James), who I had just dropped off at the railway station. He needed to get back to Derby, on a Sunday afternoon, and all the trains had been cancelled without any notice – he’d travelled from Derby to my house only yesterday and there was no mention of any services being cut.

The only trains available were taking him further away from home, with no promise of ever getting back onto the right track. In desperation he rang me and asked what to do; the only answer was for me to drive him to Birmingham New Street where he would have been getting his connection if the promised service had materialised.

As we drove up to Birmingham from just outside Worcester where I live, James commented that it wouldn’t have been so bad if he could have got to London, to then get back up to Derby. Bearing in mind that Derby is north of me and London is well over 100 miles south, I was incredulous; but he didn’t seem fazed by the idea.

Had James been forced to go to London because I wasn’t around to drive him to Birmingham, he would have spent the thick end of a day sitting in waiting rooms, retracing his steps by rail and having to endure some of the many odd habits of fellow passengers, but as someone who prefers to let the train take the strain, James doesn’t seem to care. That’s James – as for the rest of us, is it any wonder that the government can’t prise us out of our cars, even with fuel costing an arm and a leg?