Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

A couple of months ago I told you about the late-night shenanigans I experienced while travelling home from Cardiff (see I Don't Like Thursdays ). Well, you can imagine my surprise when, on 5 December, an email from Arriva Trains Wales pinged into my inbox: Case Reference: ATW-161007-BFD Dear Mr O'Gorman, Thank you for contacting us about your journey on 06 October between Cardiff and Aberdare. I am sorry to learn that your journey was disrupted, and that you were caused a delay as a result. In order for me to fully investigate and resolve your compensation claim I do need some more information from you. Could you therefore please confirm the following? • As you have requested to be paid by bank transfer please confirm the account name, sort code and account number we should pay your compensation to. I look forward to hearing from you in due course. Yours sincerely Neil Curness Customer Relations Advisor Arriva Trains Wales I emailed them back with my details, and congratulated...

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...

There's a potentially fascinating event taking place in Cardiff tonight. Some former members of the Black Panthers are giving a talk at Butetown Community Centre, about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s. Tom F. sent me an invitation a couple of weeks ago, and I was very tempted to go. I shouldn't be at all surprised if my friend Leon C. was involved with organizing it. I haven't seen him for ages, but he's passionate about history and politics, and as a Black Cardiffian he's almost certainly had a hand in putting this occasion together. I'd love to have gone to the talk. It's an aspect of modern history which has interested me since I read an interview with Jalal Nuriddin, the founder member of The Last Poets, when I was about eighteen. Martin H. fancied the idea too; he used to send money to the Black Panthers when he was a radical young Oz -reading hippy. It would probably have appealed to Lew M. as well, and I can think of a few more friends w...

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 ...