To: customer.relations@crosscountrytrains.co.uk

[STARTS]

Dear Cross Country Trains

I just want to thank one of your staff, the Train Manager on Sunday 23rd's 13.27 from Manchester Piccadilly to Oxford. We were sitting in the Quiet Coach and, together with all the other passengers, had to contend with the deliberately noisy and disruptive behaviour of a group of five young teenagers. They refused to keep the noise down, despite being asked by several people, incuding us, and kept making phone calls, shouting, trying to get reactions from other passengers etc. Eventually my partner asked the carriage if anyone objected to him asking the train staff to take action. Nobody did, and he went to get the manager, who acted swiftly and very effectively, removing them from the carriage to talk to them, and then asking them to leave the train. I was really impressed with the professional way he handled the situation, and would like to thank him again.

I am not a fan of the call centre and anonymous website culture which characterises many of our dealings with large companies, train companies included. It all feels very impersonal and a lot of customer service experiences are fairly bleak because you seldom get to talk to anyone who is an expert in anything or seems able to take responsibility for anything. So it's good to be reminded that there are of course many people in large companies who do a great job.

Yours sincerely

joella

Please note: I tried to send this via the feedback form on your website but it tells me that it is sorry, but there is an error. 

[ENDS]

Slightly worried thought: does this mean I am part of the Big Society?

joella

By the beck near Boggle Hole

This is my new favourite place. A lane comes down to the beck, and then runs out. There's a footbridge over it, but there's also a little ford, and its heap of rocks creates a mini weir, which the water bubbles over. I could listen to that noise for ever.

You can also hear the birds singing, and the bumble bees buzzing.

There's a bit of pebbly sand to sit on, and if it's warm you can paddle. The air is still, and full of the scent of wild garlic, which is all around.

The trees are coming into leaf, beech trees I think, with trunks clothed in ivy. There are ferns, and moss, and a big holly bush, and brambles, and some irises yet to flower and some red campion just beginning to.

But the main thing is the water, flowing down to the sea.

joella

Greetings from the People's Republic of Oxford East

See that little red island in the middle of the vast blue sea that now makes up the south of England? That's us, that is. Constituency swing: 4.1% to Labour. The Guardian thinks we are extraordinary. We're very proud. I love not conforming.

But, as allotment S put it on Friday morning, what were the rest of you doing? Oxford West now has a 12 year old Tory as its member of Parliament. She beat Evan Harris - Lib Dem, fan of atheism and evidence, loathed by homeopaths, homophobes and evangelists - by 176 votes. Her website tells us what she did on her gap year, and that "she has volunteered with aid projects in all sorts of exotic places like Mozambique, Rwanda, Bangladesh and a few less exotic ones like Birmingham and even Blackpool". I didn't vote Lib Dem, but if I'd lived a couple of miles west, I would have. What a disaster.

Elsewhere, lovely Lancastrian places like Morecambe, Lancaster and "even" Blackpool North were all lost by Labour to the Tories, though I am heartened by the socialist 14 year old who voted Lib Dem (tactically) in Wyre & Preston North, having gone to vote disguised as a Tory, on the grounds that nobody would expect anyone under 18 to be a Tory so he might get away with it.

It wasn't all bad: Caroline Lucas's victory in Brighton was great leap forwards for the Greens, and the BNP's annihilation in Barking and Dagenham was both just reward for the sterling work of Hope Not Hate and a great leap forwards for humanity. Whatever the world's problems, fascists are never part of the solution, and I'm glad Britain has said that more clearly than it had this time last week.

And I am greatly heartened by the fact that even with 13 years of new Labour, an illegal war, an undeniably unpopular Prime Minister, the expenses scandal *and* global financial meltdown, shiny Dave and his posh boy friends didn't get a majority. I loathe him and everything he stands for, can't help myself. But the overall outcome is a bit... WTF? I wanted a hung Parliament, but I was hoping the Lib Dems, who I basically agree with about many things, would have more seats, and more choice about who to get into bed with.

I don't think a 'progressive coalition' is going to happen, the maths are too shaky, though I would be happy to be proved wrong. So the next best thing would be a minority Tory government, which falls over by Christmas, while Labour get a new leader, then we have another election, shortly followed by a referendum on electoral reform, which might deliver something approaching the sweet moderation that this country is supposed to be good at. We might get a couple of fascists into the bargain, but I think that would be a price worth paying.

It's all kind of fascinating though, in a scary kind of way. But that's enough politics for a Sunday morning, I'm off for a bath and then to pick asparagus with Plumbing S.

joella

If I were to vote Lib Dem tomorrow...

... and I'm not saying I will be (I'm really not saying I will be), but if I were to, turns out it wouldn't be the first time.

In 1983, I was 13. I remember (though these kinds of memories are notoriously unreliable) having a conversation with my parents about voting, and who they were going to vote for. I remember my dad saying that he didn't vote, and me asking him why. He said it was because he worked in local government, and he had to be able to work with whoever was elected, so he stayed neutral.

Now, I'm sure you can have a personal political view, and yet work in a politically neutral way (indeed, all NGO X employees have been reminded that NGO X is not aligned to any political party and we shouldn't shout too loudly on social networks about our own views in the election run-up if we are identifiably NGO X), and I'm certainly sure that you can vote and still work in a politically neutral way, but maybe my dad believed that he should live neutrality as well as work neutrality. It's not the worst argument for not voting I've ever heard. Or maybe he thought 'what's the point, whatever I vote this place has Tory written through it like a stick of rock' (check it out!). Possibly I should ask him again.

But then I asked him if I could have his vote, if he wasn't going to use it, and he said I could. So on election day, we went down to the polling station (which was also my old primary school, so I felt VERY IMPORTANT), and he got his ballot paper, and he gave it to me. I went into the little booth, and decided which candidate I was going to vote for, and put my X in the box. Then I came out, and gave the paper to him, and he put it in the box.

I don't remember if he asked me who I voted for (I should ask him that too, but I'm betting he didn't). And I don't remember if I told him anyway (I'm betting I did). But my decision was this: there was one woman on the ballot paper, and I voted for her. I remember making the decision, I remember why, and I remember putting the X in the box, with the pencil on a string (I love that pencil on a string. I always want to vote like that). But until yesterday I don't think I could have told you which party she represented. For me, she represented something else altogether.

I was telling M this story last night as we were having our daily who-to-vote-for debate of our own*. I wondered again which party I'd voted for. They had the National Front in 1983, and a little shiver went down my spine in case I'd voted for a lady fascist. But a) fascists are not known for their feminism, b) coastal Tory heartlands are not known for their fascism -- even if only because there are no black people to hate** -- and c) I like to think that even at 13 I would rather have gnawed my own arm off than voted NF.

But I can't remember what I thought about politics at 13. I really can't. I can remember getting Rio by Duran Duran, and I can remember smoking my first cigarette, and I can remember hating my hair and wondering if I'd ever grow breasts, and I can remember becoming a vegetarian, but I can remember nothing about the political landscape, though the miners' strike was on the horizon and would change all that.

Still, we have the internet now. I bet you can find out, I thought. And you can (scroll down to Lancashire, Fylde).

Turns out I voted Liberal. Not a bad choice for a properly young person.

joella

* It does feel like there's a proper choice to be made, though we agreed to discount both the man in the Batman outfit and the woman who hates foreigners without further discussion.
** I don't mean to be too damning here. There are worse political landscapes than Domesday Book Tory. Like anywhere with the BNP on the ballot paper.