Friends in Inconvenient Places

Okay, it's not the friends' fault.  It's not that they moved to Cardiff; it's that I moved away from.

Of course, we frequently jump at an opportunity to piggy-back a visit on top of a trip that's being made for some other purpose, but sometimes one or more of us (more often me) will shell out for a train ticket.  They're usually not bad: a quick hop on the local line into Reading, the main body of the journey on a HST on the old Great Western mainline, and then another local trolley at the far end.  Tickets have been known to cost as little as a tenner per direction, with some judicious advance booking.

Well, this time round, I went to buy my tickets at about 3 weeks out from the intended date of travel, and due to work commitments, I was going to head out on an evening train.  Tickets before 7 were in the £50 bracket and wouldn't have left any time for dinner anyway, and anything leaving home after 8 wouldn't have got me into Cardiff until stupid-o'clock at night (and my friends aren't exactly night owls), so all things considered it had to be the 7:07pm train.  £36, and that was only to Cardiff Central, as the local trolleys get very sporadic at night.

The tickets arrived, and the 7:07 didn't actually say 7:07 anywhere on it, but turned out to be a 'Super Offpeak'.  Very helpfully, it offered absolutely no indication whatsoever as to what times of day constituted 'Super Offpeak'.  Initially I wasn't too bothered about this as I only really had one sensible choice of train anyway... but then the work arrangements changed; I was asked to do an extra day the week before last, and I managed to get a day off in lieu this week, meaning that I was no longer limited to travelling to Cardiff after dinner.

So I phoned First Great Western in a bid to figure out what 'Super Offpeak' actually meant: could I travel in the middle of the day, for example?

No I couldn't.  I must admit to not being keen on getting an Accent at the far end of a phone line, but to be fair, this particular one was much more helpful than most of the others I've encountered (and a real person, however their enunciation, is still preferable to an automated system), and got me some definitive answers: un-allocated seating would be in Coach E on the HST, and - here's the rub - 'Super Offpeak' is FGW-speak for 'at night'; in other words, I could delay travelling for as long into the small hours as I fancied, but couldn't pull it any earlier, which is what I was actually interested in.

Just out of idle curiosity, I logged back in to National Rail Enquiries, fully expecting (considering that my departure date was now only 8 days away) that the cheapest tickets would be at least £40 each.  But they weren't - the 11:02 departure, including local trolley at the far end, was still only £15.

I did the maths: I could get the 'Super Offpeak i.e. basically at night' ticket refunded, albeit paying 50p for the stamp to return it, and a £10 fee to get the refund processed - so £25.50 back, out of the initial £36.  But even after paying the postage and the processing fee, and buying the new ticket at £15, I wound up £10.50 better off.  You can do things with £10.50 - including buy a whole ticket from my place to my friends', if you book far enough in advance.  Other advantages included getting another 7 hours at their place, and not having to drag one of them into the middle of the city to collect me from Central, so it seemed a bit of a no-brainer decision.  I'll be on the 11:02.

My parting 'moral of the story': beware evening trains on First Great Western!


- The Colclough

As Far as I Could Throw You

Okay, I said I'd be off the internet for a bit because I'm staying with friends for a week, but Tim's gone out for an hour or so and Sarah's busy, which leaves me with the opportunity to borrow their computer and do a blog without feeling all antisocial.  Muahaha!

Question 13: "Please can I have your bank details?"


No, I'm afraid you can't.

That's the reductionist answer, but actually this is an interesting question - is it a straightforward request for financial assistance?  Or is it a test of how much I'd trust you?  Allow me to elaborate.

What if this is about trust issues?  We live in a paranoid world full of hackers and scammers, and those in the know tell us it's a bad idea to let anyone know anything about where your money is and how to get at it.  Don't trust anyone as far as you can throw them, they say.  I'm willing to believe them on that, although if circumstances conspired to make it necessary then I might conceivably share the critical numbers with a close friend.  Not that I can imagine what those circumstances might be.

On t'other hand, it's not that I'm stingy and all.  If the question is about you being broke and wondering if I could spare a fiver for a friend in need, then you could just ask for a fiver, and chances are I'd let you have one and I wouldn't expect it back.

However, I've just thought of a third possibility: what if someone wanted my bank details so they could put money in?  Again, it depends who they are.  Most people probably have no rational reason for putting money into my bank account, so I'd still be reluctant to tell them anything.  But if you're all that desperate to part with your cash, I do accept cheques made to 'Matthew Colclough'.

Why d'you ask?


The good news is, I do trust you enough to show you my statistics:

• Twenty Questions status: 10 down, 10 to go (half-way there, and still winning (just about))
• Days until Root Hill: 8
• Latest book read: don't remember anything since Dianetics
• Latest film/TV watched: The 39 Steps (the 1978 version with Robert Powell)
• Latest music listened to: the nearly-complete Cylinder and Miserable Official Webcomic Soundtrack: Series 1 Suite
• Latest edible item eaten: bread and marmalade
• Predominant colour of clothes: approximately grey
• Programs and web pages currently running: it's someone else's computer, so this'll be a bit different to usual: Incredimail, Sony Vegas, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; A White Horizon; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1334; Fort Paradox #70

- The Colclough