Ticket to ride

I have a railcard. It cost £26 and promises the earth, or at least a certain amount of Britain, at my disposal for far reduced ticket prices. I have used it once already. I did actually try to use it twice, but the first time it wasn’t allowed. I had agreed to meet E in a local town in order to celebrate our wedding anniversary by going to a concert. He was coming straight from work; I was catching a bus and train from home once the babysitter was there. (It’s not that Ted isn’t old enough to babysit, it’s not even that he wouldn’t be any good in a crisis, it’s simply that he might not notice the crisis as it approached).

At the station I proudly waved my railcard and asked for an adult return. “How many children?” I don’t think he was asking how large my family was, but how many I had brought with me. “None,” I smiled contentedly. “You can’t use this railcard then.” “But…” “No, it’s a family and friends one; you have to take a child with you.” I didn’t want to take a child with me. It was my wedding anniversary.

The next time I used the card I had the full complement of children and husband with me. Last Saturday we went to the Cotswolds for the day for a family party for my brother’s birthday. I had planned the route. There were four trains and a taxi involved but it would be cheap, environmentally less damaging than a car, and efficient enough to get us to the restaurant on time. A friend, Bob, gave us a lift to the station. We bought our tickets. Lexy in particular was touchingly excited about the trip. The day was bright and sunny. There was a guard there to tell us which of the two trains in the station we should catch.

A word of advice. Do not believe that guards have an infallible knowledge of the best route to your destination

Five minutes later we alighted from the train at the next station to await our connection. Only it was the wrong connection. True, you could get to our destination this way, but ONLY BY ADDING AN HOUR TO THE JOURNEY. Sorry, I felt the need to shout that.

The taxi was booked at the other end. The restaurant was booked. Five other people would be waiting for us.

As is common in these situations we had a little row, made some calls, stomped our feet, and settled down to wait. Then I spotted the car hire place next door. It was open Saturday and Sunday. We could hire a car for a day and whiz down the motorway. Except, they would be shut from noon Saturday to early Tuesday because it was Easter and we would therefore have to hire a car for three days. Except they were all out of big cars. “I could treat you to a Mercedes,” said one of the staff. My eyes lit up. A Mercedes! I’ve never driven one of those! “That’ll be £332 please.” I still haven’t driven a Mercedes.

And so we waited for the train. And then we caught it to Reading where we waited again. And then we caught another one. There were no spare seats. We stood. The children loved the open window and couldn’t understand why we didn’t want them playing with it. We tried to reach the taxi company as the taxi was shortly due at our final destination. We couldn’t. Thankfully, my sister-in-law, sitting in a car in a traffic jam somewhere in the Cotswolds, was able to. We changed trains again. We stood again. The children played up again. The taxi charged us £10 more than we had expected.

Why? Why? Why had we made the decision to live without a car? What a stupid thing to do. Later, on the way home, lightening had struck a signal box and all the trains were out on one of our many lines. We had an hour's delay. We arrived at our local station just after the bus had left from the next door bus station. The train was not late - that is simply the way the timetables have been planned. We took another taxi.

In terms of finance, a car would have been cheaper at the weekend. In terms of speed, convenience and general contentment it would have been better. On the other hand, what harm was done? We were tired and hungry, but not so that we could not cope. We inconvenienced everyone but really an hour isn’t that long. The restaurateurs were fantastic and stayed open for an extra hour for us. This fact, combined with excellent food and service, means that we would recommend The Falcon at Poulton, Glos, to anyone (www.falconinnpoulton.co.uk), so that extra hour’s work may not have been such a bad thing. And the children had yet another lesson in discovering that sometimes things are not very convenient but you have to manage anyway. I doubt they appreciated that though.

Also, aren’t we just so smugly ecofriendly?

Lech be a lady tonight

Not having a car is leading to all sorts of new experiences, the last of which seems to have done something to my hip. Saturday was my friend T’s birthday and she had invited me out to go out with a couple of friends, one of whom would drive us to a local town. The driver, however, could not get a babysitter, an occupational hazard of being the parent of young children. Normally I, being one of the few other drivers in the group, would have offered to get out the tank and we would have chugged our way a few tried and tested miles down the road. Not last night - another friend, M, came forward and suggested a trip further afield to the club where her brother was a DJ. Her husband decided that he couldn’t let us out on our own and said he would drive.

We ended up in the heart of Reading’s Polish community. M and her twin brother moved from Poland to England a few years ago and her brother has a regular Saturday night slot at Gospoda, a Polish pub/club where he plays dance music (and I don't mean a genteel foxtrot) into the early hours of the morning. We arrived at a time (9.30ish) when few punters had plucked up the courage (or downed enough Lech larger) to strut their stuff on the wooden dance floor, but that did not stop T. She was clearly born to party and in a pair of heels that should have made her hobble, wobble and topple over but didn’t, she made the floor her own. Her much younger niece had warned me that I would be hard pressed to keep up with her. She was right. And I was wearing comfy biker boots.

In brief breaks from dancing, we sat outside among people who spoke little English, but a good deal more than our Polish. It was a strange and rather wonderful experience. In the way that Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons apparently flew from New York to Havana for dinner (as Sky Masterson and Sergeant Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls) we seemed to have done the impossible and driven to Warsaw for the evening. And this is something that I would not have done had I not given up the car.

There was a good, friendly crowd and I didn’t feel what I had feared  - out of place and at least 30 years older than almost everyone else.  I  stomped my comfy boots with the best of them - though grungy comfort clearly wasn’t the fashion  and T’s heels were no exception there.  The only problem was that by around 1am I had shaken off all pretence of youth and was thinking of sitting down with a nice cup of tea before getting into bed. We didn’t leave until 2.30am. On the other hand, I don’t think T would have wanted to leave any earlier and it was her birthday.(PS she's older than I am).

That is, of course, the drawback of being given a lift:  you are not free to leave when you wish. Having your own car gives you an independence that is not to be sniffed at. Being dependent on others can mean an unequal relationship, or at least a perceived one on one side. Being dependent on public transport can leave you stranded. T recalled a night out in Reading once before when she and her friend had to wait until the 6am train before they could go home. “It was summer so it could have been worse,” she said philosophically, “but it was still a bit cold.”

The other option is to take taxis but only if you have money to throw around.  We are going on a visit to my parents soon and, armed with our soon-to-be-purchased rail card, will be taking the train. Unfortunately, despite my assiduous studying of complicated bus timetables, there are no buses to take us from the only train station for miles around (thanks Dr Beeching), and the only way to get all five of us from the station to the restaurant where we all plan to meet is to take a taxi. It will cost us about £2 a mile. Hmm.

Still, my international jet setting this week has taught me something that I shall be able to use once we are at the restaurant where we shall celebrate my brother’s birthday. I shall be able to raise a glass and say “Na zdrowie!” Cheers!

Note to self: ask M how to pronounce word. Further note to self: See doctor about dodgy hip damaged while dancing.

I stand, against the Faceless Man

I want a car! I want a smooth, shiny, silent (almost) metal thing on wheels with an iPod connector so that your music can sing uninterrupted through the speakers.

Oh, I loved that. Last weekend we hired a car to take a long-anticipated trip to Nottingham for the surprise birthday party our friends hold every year for at least three people (yes, I know the surprise bit is a touch ironic). I am not sure what sort of car it was - grey, five seater at a push - but the iPod connector seemed the height of luxury (and the car did about five million more miles to the gallon than our old tank had done). True, E, Lexy and Coco were a little squashed in the back, while in the front, Ted and I - the ones who get car sick - couldn’t hear each other talk because of the loud music, but that connector…

OK, I’m easily pleased and as you will soon see, pretty shallow, but it strikes me that hiring a car from time to time gives us the best of both worlds. We can drive the latest model with all its mod cons and fleetingly impress the neighbours with our great wealth, though, somehow, I suspect that the obvious need we have for house repairs tells them another story. The rest of the time we can save money, keep fit and be smug about our green credentials, maybe keeping quiet about the car hiring lest it undermine our smugness. Of course we could have paid an extra £1.50 a day to the car hire company as a carbon offset but what with the extra we were aready paying to reduce our excess in case of accident, the price was steep enough already.

Hiring a car isn’t selling out, honestly. It is being what is known as car-light, or car-lite if you want to be modern and illiterate. And it has distinct advantages. No more worrying about garage bills, no more worries about insurance.

An insurance is something I worry about, with good cause. I am still investigating this matter, but tell me - is it right that an insurance company can charge £300 for 30 days insurance? That’s right. I had taken out new insurance just before the car broke down and when I came to cash it in, a mere 30 days after signing up, I found that the company in question wished to charge an ‘administration’ fee of £38 (as pushing a few buttons on a computer is very costly), and £176.21 for, as far as I can see, being a mug enough to sign up with them in the first place. I was told that this was something to do with the fee they had to pay the underwriter, but no-one could tell me what that fee was. In fact, there was no-one to ask as everyone beyond the poor souls on the customer service desk is nameless and faceless.

“What difference would it make if you had a name to contact?” asked the man who had been on the receiving end of my rant. And therein lies a problem in the way we do business these days. It is all impersonal. There is no-one who can give you answers. There is no-one to discuss things with. The customer service team can do what the system says, and let’s face it, computer says no.

A good example of this problem came last year when my newish laptop (still under guarantee at least) developed a problem and went back to the suppliers for repair. It returned without an ‘on’ button. 

Unsurprisingly, I was a little miffed and rang the company to ask them to remedy the situation. The help desk said they would sort it out IN THREE WEEKS TIME. I became more miffed. I was passed from one person to another. I demanded to speak to someone higher up in the management team. I was told that such a person was not ‘customer facing’. I had a vision of a group of serious men and women sitting at desks high up in a windowless tower, each one of them facing a grey stone wall.

I did some online investigations. I found a name. I went to the top. Within 10 minutes of my email to the head of customer services I received a telephone call from the man himself. It was sorted. David Grieve, you were a star. And that is why it makes a difference if I had a name to contact.

Mind you, it would have been a good idea if I had read the small print.

Big black taxi come and took away that young man

There are a few things which those of us used to driving (or being driven in the case of my children) must learn. One is to read bus timetables and to accept that buses will turn up early when you are late and late when you are on time. Another is to work out the exact spot to stand if you need to take a taxi. Oh, and never be afraid of the dark, or you won’t do anything.

So yesterday Teenage Ted and I took the bus then the train to the theatre and the train then a taxi back. Today Ted and I had the challenge of an early morning appointment with the doctor and the need to get him to and from his drama class and me to and from a meeting. In theory it was all simple. In practice I realise that my children have been brought up to believe that time is infinitely flexible and if you are still watching TV/finding socks/eating breakfast when it is time to leave then this will have no impact on the journey ahead of you. Of course, I cannot imagine where they have got this idea from since I am entirely blameless in all this…

So yesterday I called Ted and I called him and still he did not appear. Eventually he arrived and we set out. I was thankful that I had written a few extra minutes into our schedule. The bus had not. It arrived early. We ran and I was again thankful, this time that there were sufficient passengers getting off to hold up the bus long enough for a lanky teenager and a wheezing middle-aged woman to clamber on.

I am not a teacher but I assume it takes teenagers a while to learn boring facts and bus timetables are not that interesting (well, they may be to some people but it takes all sorts). So it was this morning that we hurried to catch a bus to get to the doctor and this time missed it - I think a lack of easy-find socks was to blame. But that was all to the good as a friend saw us, picked us up, drove us into the town and then took Ted to school. Sometimes ignoring timetables can work in your favour.

But the taxi was a different matter. Now, as a young stripling with the ability to claim back company expenses, I was forever hailing Black Cabs in London and saying things like “The Ritz please, my good man, and make it snappy”. Perhaps taking such a tone led to my being blacklisted by all cab drivers. What other explanation can there have been for the curious incident of the cab in the night time? Last night, the lanky teenager and the wheezing midde-aged woman alighted from the train and decided to take a taxi home after an excellent evening seeing To Kill a Mockingbird at a theatre in a nearby town. We had ascertained that there were no buses that linked with trains after the middle of the evening since all people taking the evening trains must also either have cars, or live near the station, or be wealthy enough to take taxis. We fall into none of these categories. The theatre trip had been a work outing for me (I review  for a local newspaper - another challenge in my current carless state) and now Ted and I needed to return home.

We had to splash out on the taxi and stood second-in-line at the taxi rank. A cab turned up with its yellow light indicating it was for hire and the man in front jumped in. Don’t worry, another one will be here soon I assured Ted. Sure enough, a cab approached, also with its yellow ‘for hire’ sign shining encouragingly. We stepped forward. The cab shot several yards beyond us and the young man behind us scuttled past and leapt in, glancing furtively over his shoulder at us. It was another 10 or 15 minutes before the next taxi arrived. And then it cost us £10 to drive for six minutes.

Still, this evening was also bizarre. Ted and I missed a bus to get him to drama (lack of shirt this time) and then I walked home, walked to a meeting and walked home again only to find that the babysitter who had looked after Coco earlier was still there and scared of walking home in the dark. Leaving Ted in charge (thank you H for getting him home from drama) I walked her back again. Don’t be afraid of the dark - it will get you nowhere.

We're S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G, we're shopping

We have had unexpected visitors for the weekend. This has been an immense pleasure and an interesting experiment in how to ensure that eight people can get around without a car. One of Lexy’s two best friends - the one who moved to Cornwall - her sister and mother (one of my best friends) were given a lift back here for the weekend. We knew on Friday afternoon which was no problem only it gave us little time to shop.

Part of the carless business relies on us using the internet to do grocery shopping. I would happily use an independent local grocery store if only I could afford it and if it stocked what an average family needs. The two near us fail on both counts (please, I want more than frozen pizza and tinned meat pie for every meal and how can I afford cat food at THAT price?) which leaves the small and expensive branch of an international megasupermarket (they keep the savings down at the small ones) or the internet. I understand that it is this type of attitude that has led to the demise of the local corner shop, but there is a limit to my charity.

If I did not have the internet I do not know how we would afford to shop. I appreciate that having the internet costs money but it seems money well spent. We must save the amount it costs several times over by buying online. Of course, when shopping at a distance it is easy to press that button and buy that expensive bottle of wine that you would put back in the shop, to mistakenly order 50 yoghurts that will not fit in the fridge, or to buy what you think is reasonably priced cheesecake for six only to find it is an over-priced slice for one (still, at least the rest of the family can eat yoghurt).

But overall, if we didn’t have the internet our shopping bills would be much higher and our arms would ache more as this weekend demonstrated.

Shopping for eight involved three trips to the local small megasupermarket branch and if shopping lugging ever becomes a recognised sport, I shall be a champion. 

That’s not a problem for the weekend and our friends shared the cost, but it underlined the issues faced by those who have neither internet nor car. Last year 27 per cent of households did not have the internet. Those who do not have the internet tend to be older and/or without formal qualifications. The same groups of people have higher numbers of non-drivers among them. So, the poor get hit again.

Something else I noticed about being carless this weekend was the need to look for entertainment locally. Usually when we have guests, we get in the car and go somewhere. We have been known to take guests to the same beautiful arboretum two visits in a row and remember only later (the guests were very polite and said nothing). This time everything we did was within walking distance as the thought of herding everyone onto the bus was too much. My friend K did express a desire to visit the local town to explore the charity shops as the ones near her were apparently as nothing compared with ours - and that is yet another reason why she should not have moved - but how could we fit that in with the commitment we had already made to join the local community group in making Mother's Day presents? Teenage Ted wanted to go to the large shopping centre to buy presents though I suspect he had ulterior motives, our carlessness having coincided with his increased interest in fashion. But there was no time so instead cheap and cheerful presents were made at the community centre, and K and I appreciated them, though perhaps not the way the soil from the pot plants was mixed in with the cakes.

So I guess local shopping did save us money. It also made us feel nicely smug. Not only were the presents homemade and therefore somehow worth more, on the way up the road we passed a stretch limo which had been hired by a family to take their son out for a pizza as a birthday treat. What a carbon footprint we laughed with superior confidence. Yes, but I bet he felt really special and had a day to remember. I might just get my kids a cheap pair of trainers each to use when they walk to the take-away for their birthday treats.