Dan’s life was a lesson in middle-class accomplishment. Just 24, he was fair shinning his way up the greasy pole of white-collar respectability. He had already bagged a job (marketing), a girlfriend (slim), his own residence (rented), and 6,500 Nectar card points (enough for a new griddle pan). That said, he had to take the train every morning to work, and it was a living hell. It was a shame for Dan on a personal level, because in all other respects his life was peachy – still, there it is.
What did he hate about his daily train journey? Nothing much really, apart from the overcrowding, delays, cancellations, stultifying heat, robotic and repetitive announcements, over-price ‘inflation-busting’ tickets, and the unavoidable glimpses of Lewisham. He wore a very dapper suit to work, but was routinely afraid that it would be creased, dampened, or soiled by the commuter scrum. He bought the Daily Telegraph every morning and held it in front of him as a makeshift buffer zone. It was turning him more Conservative, but the suit needed to be protected.
Dan had been brought up to think he was destined for better things. As a youth he had ridden on a Virgin Pendolino – an Italian family of tilting trains. Bliss it was to travel in that way! His daily train to work didn’t tilt, though it sometimes felt like as if it did (because Dan was nauseous, or had read too much of the Telegraph). On the Pendolino the journey was so comfortable that he almost forgot he was bound for Manchester.
Despite his mounting Conservativism, Dan grew to hate the Major government which had enacted rail privatisation in the 1990s. They had made a real dog’s dinner of it – even if Major himself was a fundamentally decent man, who liked cricket. At the next election, Dan vowed to vote Lib Dem, even if their potential to overhaul the railways was much to be doubted.
