Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

I was in Cardiff the weekend before last, and while I was walking through St David's Centre I saw a large group of students studying a large mural. I wondered what was causing so much excitement, so I decided to check it out for myself. This is what I found. (I know the photo isn't great, because I took it with my phone, but there's a reason for that.) It's a clever idea, isn't it? Grafting Cardiff and the suburbs onto the Tube map – that iconic piece of design which evolves as the network grows and changes – proves that someone at the South Wales Echo (where it originally appeared) has a sense of humour. Unfortunately, it had totally confused the youngsters. A couple of Chinese students were having a very animated discussion about it; a few West African girls were equally enthralled by the idea of the Barry John Line, the John Charles Line, and the Cardiff Arms Dart. I looked at it with them for a few minutes, took a couple of photos, and then turned to them and s...

The Wales Online website today has a feature called 7 Ways the Beeching Cuts stitched up the Welsh rail system . It highlights some of the absurd and time-consuming journeys faced by passengers travelling between our country's large towns, since the branch lines connecting them were torn up five decades ago (see Nice Work If You Can Get There .) One of the seven journeys they singled out was this: Unfortunately, as is the wont of local papers (and their websites), the gremlins got involved along the way. In true Private Eye tradition, the pictures have been transposed. The short journey, across the heads of the valleys via Merthyr and Aberdare, hasn't been possible in my lifetime. Instead, passengers have to travel via Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend and Neath in order to reach their destination. With this in mind, I've just sent the following email to the editor: I liked today's online feature about the way Dr Beeching ruined the railways in Wales. It was interesting to se...

This one was written in April 2002, and sent to the South Wales Echo , who declined to print it. It's a follow-up to the earlier (published) A Letter to the Editor 1 . . On September 27 last year, you printed a letter from me in which I suggested that Shamrock Coaches had developed a Stealth Bus, invisible to all forms of detection. I am pleased to report that I have just returned from a Public Enquiry into Shamrock Coaches at Rhondda Magistrates' Court, held over three days under the chairmanship of Traffic Commissioner David Dixon. The experience has been, to say the least, enlightening. During the enquiry, Mr Clayton Jones wove a tangled web of conspiracy theories involving various arms of the Vehicle Inspectorate, Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council, the police, head teachers of schools throughout south Wales, the Traffic Area Office, and a powerful supercomputer, which is apparently situated somewhere in Pontypridd and has the ability to alter time and space. I suspe...

This one appeared in the South Wales Echo in August 2002. At the time, our train service was a lot more limited than it is now, and I took the opportunity to have a bit of fun. I sent it in – but somewhere between my typewriter and the finished page, the Echo typesetters struck. A few weeks later I bumped into my old Maths teacher in the takeaway. He took me to task for using Roman capitals for the irrational numbers – but I'd typed them in italics to begin with. (Incidentally, I seem to be one of the few people who've noticed that Platform 5 has disappeared altogether from Cardiff Central Station. It's all a bit Harry Potter…) Following the news that Cardiff Central Station now has a Platform Zero, I wonder whether Wales and West Trains have any plans to add further platforms in the spirit of mathematical adventure. For instance, the 'circular' City Line between Radyr and Coryton would be ideally suited to run from Platform π , which represents the ratio between ...

I used to be a prolific letter-writer to the local press. This one was published in the South Wales Echo . It appeared on my day off, so I didn't know it had gone into print until the following day. Apparently the lads in Mulligan's (our lunchtime local, in Cardiff) laughed so loudly when they read it that Jeff and Laurie (my work colleagues) were surprised I didn't hear them from my house, some twenty miles away. Your little jibe (Editorial, September 21) about buses running on time made me wonder about the parallels between UFO sightings and bus non-sightings. Both UFOs and missing buses are frequently reported by a wide cross-section of the public, regardless of their age, gender or religious background. Both phenomena used to excite a great deal of interest by local newspapers and TV stations, but are now largely disregarded. Reliable witness testimony is usually met with disbelief, if not outright scorn, by the bodies concerned with their official investigation. UFO ab...