Virgin Railways insist they didn’t cock up! It wasn’t their fault, it was the engineering company Network Rail hired to repair/rebuild the line over New Year. Well whatever, I don’t care if it was anyone’s fault, my journey suffered! A whole 40 minutes of “extra time” were taken away from my life, and I want them back (“Oh what the hell, I’d probably just waste them anyway…”).
To be honest, I don’t care who’s fault it was mainly because I’m not the type of person to get angry about something that is beyond both mine and everyone else’s control. To be truly honest, I secretly enjoyed the journey on a different line into London, it took a bit longer and gave me longer to revise for the next day’s exams! Anyway Virgin Rail kindly sent me a letter saying, to coin the phrase, “This one’s on us”. I read further and discovered “this one” was actually a free First Class rail ticket! SWEET! I’d never ridden First Class before but I’d heard it was goooooood!
Well my fun began when booking the ticket. “Please enter the unique PIN sent with the letter”…. “erm? Where’s my PIN? Where’s my PIN? Where’s my F**KING PIN!? Oh there it is no bother”. After those shenanigans (and I MEAN shenanigans: I’d spent 3 days trying to find an 8 digit number in the deepest recesses of my bedroom, only to find the number printed on the covering letter from Virgin), I thought, “Well my lecture on Friday finishes at….12 so if I book a 4 o’clock train I should just make it through 4 stations on the Victoria line to Euston in time.” I forgot about labs, which of course finish at 5; AFTER the time my train was supposed to leave, but since this WAS first class after all, it probably was wise not to go to labs. I mean, no business man/woman/machine probably would acknowledge the idea that a tired, bedraggled, long haired student with piercings (some people might know who I am now!) smelling of solvent abuse and wearing jeans and a T-Shirt could ever be sitting next to them in First Class (“Of all places to see a Hoodie!”). So I took my seat.
A great wide armchair of a thing with enough legroom to count the money I haven’t made on the Futures Market in. I even had a table and a CHINA cup. Not a paper Starbucks takeaway cup, a PROPER cup. This was travelling, suddenly I realised my whole life had been empty up ‘til this point. I had never sat in a chair so BIG! And the silence in the carriage, it made me guilty as I crunched on my Salt and Vinegar journey treat. I expected someone would turn round any second and tell me, in no uncertain terms, to “shut the f**k up with those crisps!”. But none of this happened. Instead I actually got OFFERED food. And the Train People (they’re just normal people that work on trains, hence the name) were so polite “Would you like a sandwich please?” As if I was doing them a FAVOUR taking a sandwich off their trolley. The whole first class set up made me actually feel GUILTY for taking a piece of food. These people had paid an insane amount of money to sit in nice, big seats; to have a bit of peace and quiet and to have some food and coffee (by my calculations, if they paid the usual £220 a ticket that makes the Mozarella & Pesto sandwiches, with a coffee and a cold drink a reasonable £190) and here I was taking free food and drink, sitting in a free seat and reading a book about how God doesn’t exist (sheer blasphemy. Literally blasphemy!).
Minus the usual feeling of guilt and loathing, things were going well. That is until the ticket man came round. No ticket in my pockets, no ticket in my laptop bag, no ticket in my small bag and no ticket in my big bag! In those few moments before the ticket man came to my seat, I understood in it’s fullness just exactly how a barbaric prisoner of war felt being in Rome, surrounded by rich Romans, waiting to see what “that large pussy cat” felt so angry about, and what those people in the circle surrounding the large pussy cat were so excited about (being thrown to the lions). Well you know what they say, “When in Rome….”. So I put on my mohst pohlite arccent and said “Oh, funny story here, I appear to have dropped my tickets on the platform at Euston. This is MOST inconvenient. I understand it’s your job to check if I have a ticket, but I don’t. I bought one, but I don’t have it. Could you kindly give Euston a call, see if anything has been handed in please? Thank you kindly.” Well his reaction was – and wait for it – “Oh just call Euston from your destination station”.
Is that IT? I said THAT and essentially got a FREE first class ticket (I mean OK, I did have a ticket, just not with me). He didn’t care. I wonder if I had been sitting in Standard Class if things would have been different. Maybe he would have requested me to pay the full amount. Being in First Class may have given him the idea that I MUST have bought the ticket. And if that’s true and it was my polite accent that swung it, then maybe all people who appear rich/upper class are really all like everyone else; self conscious, guilty of assistance and out of place. It could just all be a front (I suspect it is).
I don’t think I’ll differentiate between “those rich dicks” and us poor students again, there’s just those who are good at pretending and those, like myself, who are content being themselves. Rich people are cool! I just don’t want to be part of that scene.
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