You Can't Even Trust Them To Lie

So, there I was at work, pondering the options on how I would get to wher eI would be staying in Bletchley. I was cursing the fact that no-one had told me that the congestion charge in London was abolished between Christmas and the New Year, because I could have driven into work, parked the car at the back of the office (although its seemed as if all the other people in the office who had made it in -- all five of them -- had roughly the same idea) and drive straight off. But, since the other workers' cars seemed to consist of BMW Convertibles and Lexuses, perhaps my Nissan Micra would have been scoffed at. Not that I actually give a shit.

However, since I was unaware of this concession, it wasn't an option. I could eitehr walk to Euston to buy the ticket, or I could go straight to Harrow & Wealdstone, buying a tube ticket to Harrow On The Hill. At the last minnute, I decided to walk to Euston, just in case there was an unadvertised replacement bus service.

On arrival, I was bemused to see that, although there were no Virgin Trains, there did appear to be London Midland trains. I went to the ticket office.

"Your web site says that there are no trains from Euston to Milton Keynes. But the screen seems to say that there are".

"There were no trains yesterday."

"That's a fascinating historical fact. But not really very useful to me at the moment."

(Man looks at screen carefully).. "Yup, looks like they're running".


Well, that was a result.


Although not for people planning to travel on Virgin. In the fashion that Oscar Wilde referred to the last Chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop and his reaction on hearing of the death of Little Nell -- "It would take a man with a heart of stone not to laugh". Virgin took out a full page ad in yesterday's Guardian (no sign of Mr Pickle here, though -- it was signed by managing director Chriss Gibb) saying that Virgin would not, after all, be running the trains that they had promised to run (and had sold tickets for) on December 31, but it was all Network Rail's fault, which had insisted on continuing the engineering works between Northampton and Birmingham "on this crucial travel day", as Virgin called it.

Collective Responsibility has not just vanished from Cabinet; it's also gone from the rail network. The entire page appears to consist of Virgin passing the buck and in effect saying "and we've told Teacher about it" (We felt it necessary to refer the matter to the Office of Rail Regulation).

What Virgin trains most definitely hasn't done is offer the 6,000 people who have reserved seats their money back. What they have done is say that "due to the extensive timetable alterations, we cannot provide previously reserved seats".

In other words, the one thing that was within Virgin's power, to say that "yes, this is a balls up, but it wasn't our fault, but we understand if you want to travel by car instead"; indeed, the one thing that Virgin could have done to alleviate their customers' problems, Virgin has failed to do.

Well, those big dividends (twice the annual profit for the year, remember) have to come from somewhere.

+++++++

But I was one of the lucky ones. And Bletchley was very nice. On Saturday morning we drove out to Willen Lake and walked round it. We saw an old church designed by Robert Hooke (Christopher Wren's navvy and hod carrier, I called him, which caused some bristling) although by all accounts all he did was turn up one day (Bletchley was a long way from London in the late 17th century, if you see what I mean) and delegate the whole thing to other subordinates.

Then we walked past the Peace Pagoda (I mean, it's not as if the Buddhists have any pagodas glorifying war), but the deeply fascinating story of Willen Lake is "Goatless Island" (not its real name).

The lake itself was created to take excess water from the River Ouzel when it rained. In the middle of the northern lake is an island, and some bright spark on the council decided to put some goats on it. One morning, not long after these poor animals had been deposited on an island about 100 yards by 50 yards, the goats had vanished. The local newspaper ran the story for weeks. Someone had stolen the goats!

My own theory was more subtle. After all, people object to putting animals in zoos. Who is to say that the goats didn't just wake up one day and discovered that they were on the goat equivalent of Alcatraz -- a prison surrounded by water? It is not just bars that a prison make, said Captain Goat, head of the Escape Committee.

So, one night, they stole a boat and rowed ashore, vanishing forever. Or, more likely, they tried to swim ashore, and drowned.

However, my favourite theory is that they got in the boat, got part of the way across, but then got into some kind of difficulty. They abandoned ship, just about made it back to the island, and decided that a better way to escape would be via a tunnel.

And, Shawshank Redemption style, they are still there, tunneling under the lake until, one day, they will emerge in the cemetry of St Margaret's Church (arch. Robert Hooke, 1680) and gambol away to freedom, only to be struck by a passing lorry on the nearby M1.