I pretty much had the carriage to myself, but then, just before the train left the station 2 adults and gaggle of ankle biter appear.

“Do you want to sit at a table?” the more shrill adult says to her progeny, standing next to my table.

“I already am”, I think to myself, “go and spread yourselves somewhere I’m not. There are at least 3 other empty tables in this carriage alone.” They all sat down next to me. I grumpily moved out of my slouching position to make room.

Within minutes, one of the kids made a grab for the shiny iPod. I moved it out of the way and put it down by my side. Then two of the kids start arguing over a book, engaging in a tug of war over the magazine I was reading propped up on my side of the table. I hear no remonstrations from the adults. Admittedly, I had my iPod turned on, so I there might have been something said, but I saw no evidence of the usual “the man will be angry if you don’t behave”.

I just don’t get it. We all have to share public transport, so why on a nearly empty train do people have to come and inflict their kids on other passengers (i.e. me). I would go as far to say it is rude. It shows a disregard for your fellow passenger. You might find your kids annoying, but at least put them somewhere they only annoy you, not others. They should invent some sort of ASBO for people like that.

Or, users of public transport should be given un-removable stickers with “A Bloody Menace” to stick on annoying kids..

First off, the train was 20 minutes late and disappeared from the information board a few times before it actually appeared. Not a good way to instill confidence in the users of the service. Once we were on the train, it got worse. At least, to begin with I thought it was going well. The conductor came through and sold us our tickets, which I heard him say cost 70p each. This amount did seem cheap to me, but not unreasonable for the 15 mile Ledbury to Hereford journey, return. I hand him £1.40 and he looks at me. It turns out that it was £4.70 each. A total of £9.40 for the pair of us.

Consider that for a moment. A 15 mile journey. The bus service from Ledbury to Hereford that runs on time costs £3.00 each return, the car would have cost, I reckon £5 tops if you take account of wear and tear. The train costs nearly twice the price! How on earth the government expects to ever get anyone off the road onto those rip-off merchants I will never know. Of course, they’re quite happy to spend £25 billion pounds on bloody useless atomic weapons (and they really are useless, for they have no use) but they’d rather make the roads more expensive then doing anything with our waste of space rail network.

It really makes me furious. I would absolutely love to use the train regularly, but you can’t even trust the information boards half the time – imagine if I turned up a few minutes late, when the information was missing from the board. I’d have gone home again thinking there wasn’t another train for nearly an hour. Why can’t they do anything right?

Oh and I also found out that the conductor lined Great Western’s pockets a little more by charging us for a standard day return when he could have given us an cheap evening return for £3.50. In combination with a young persons railcard that would have brought us to a far more reasonable £4.80 ish for the pair of us.