I suppose I could say I am a shameful capitalist, what with being entirely reliant on everything purchasable and virtually nothing God-given, apart from air, conversation and views.
So, being a self-confessed capitalist, it should come as no shock or surprise to me when this mode of living comes and smacks me back in the face as hard as a pigeon flying into helicopter blades.
I’d decided to go down south to Monica’s wedding a day early and stop over in London, it being impossible to get all the way from Liverpool to Horsham in one trip in time for a 2pm service tomorrow.
So there I stand, proud and upright on Lime Street Station, holding my new suit bag (see yesterday) looking at the departure time for the London train. Having only ten minutes to spare, I decide against gambling with the long cue for the ticket booths (Liverpool Lime Street Station still operating THREE functional booths, the same as any small provincial town, when any proper major city station usually boasts between ten to thirty) and get a ticket on the train, as is my usual practice.
The extra time can be well used grabbing a paper and bite to eat in W.H.Smiths and still leave just about enough time to limp towards the platform with four bags and collapse on the train in a mess of sweat and exhaustion. Perfect.
And I’m glad I chose go to W.H.Smiths for food too as an announcement was made immediately after departing that the shop wouldn’t be open for a while due to unforeseen difficulties. They’ll have known this for maybe half an hour before departure but won’t announce it in case some passengers have the initiative to hop off and spend their money on the concourse. This is due to the robbing, evil, desperate nature of Virgin Trains and if you think I’m being unjust, the following will uncurl the hair in your afro….
Somewhere past Crewe the female conductor (not a problem with her being female, obviously, but just painting the picture) came down the train asking for tickets. When she got to me, I asked for a return from Liverpool to London.
Now, before I tell my tale, it’s important to remember these facts. Firstly, it’s not illegal to get on a Virgin train without a ticket, in fact, it’s widely assumed a great many passengers will and the train conductors are not only equipped with advanced card-swiping machinery to sell tickets, they also get a 5% commission.
Second, I’ve bought dozens of tickets on Virgin trains in the past.
Third, there are no signs to warn against the following….
Having asked for a return from Liverpool to London she says this;
‘One return from Liverpool to London, thank you. That will be £175.’
‘No. It’s £57.’
And I know it’s £57 because I do this journey a lot and know it down to the last pence. It’s in fact £57.30. She’s not seeing me eye-to-eye though.
“No. It’s £175. You can’t get a Saver ticket onboard the train.’
At this point the passengers around me all start to take notice of the situation. They can’t have helped overhear and are about a twentieth as shocked as I am, which is still pretty shocked.
‘But the price is £57. It was last week.’ I say, beginning my defence.
‘Yes, but that’s a Saver ticket. You can’t buy those on the train. You have to get those from the ticket office.’
‘Hang on… You’re saying that getting a ticket before I get on the train is £57, but getting one on the train is £175?’
Now the carriage is nodding in agreement with my argument. At least, the four people around me are. They all have pre-paid tickets but are sharing my dilemma.
“Yes,’ She replies ‘that’s been the rule since January.’
Now at this point I know I have a small audience (about six, the same number reading this) and try to form them into a gang by being pleasantly clever with the train conductor.
‘You don’t understand,’ I begin. ‘I want to travel on this train, not my own special gold train.’
This gets a laugh from the table adjacent to me but her face doesn’t alter.
‘Sir. It’s £175 return from Liverpool to London. You can have a single for £85.’
‘But £175….’ I start doing some inaccurate maths, ‘That’s a 320% mark up on the price charged at the ticket booth.’
The other passengers like my speedy but slight wrong arithmetic and nod in agreement. I have a gang on my side now.
‘Yes.’ Is all she can say. ‘But you can get off at Stafford if you like. Buy a Saver ticket and get the following train.’
This is crazy. I can’t believe that a) she’s asking such a mark-up on the usual fare (£57 to £175 – what the hell’s that about?) and b) I can’t believe that the standard fare from Liverpool to London is £175, standard class. No-one pays that. If you go to the ticket booth five minutes before a train leaves you pay £57. So why £175?
She’s been reasonable with the get-out clause of getting out Stafford but her get-out clause is also a get-off clause. I got a call last night whilst watching the England game from a woman galled Vicky who works for an animation company in London. She was wondering if I’d like to write some scripts for a poker channel and, hearing I was coming to London the next day, would I like to meet up?
With this meeting in mind, I realised I couldn’t get the following train. I wanted to be on time for the meeting and not make a bad impression. So I bought the £85 single, but definitely without the correct amount of objection.
As soon as this disgusting purchase has been made, not without a lot of head shaking and protesting at the stupidity and lawlessness of this ‘new’ rule, the conductor walks down the carriage collecting other people’s tickets and my phone rings. It’s Vicky, cancelling the meeting. She had to rush off somewhere, and was it a problem? ‘No, no, that’s fine.’
The passengers around me shared the situation. I loathed that ticket conductor now and was sure I was part of some elaborate scam with hidden cameras in every plastic crevice of the train.
I should have fought her tooth and nail on the whole ticket issue in front on a big crowd on the train but the fact is there’s no point. It’s not a bartering situation and she hasn’t made the stupid price up out the top of her head. Some imbecile at Virgin Trains has, it’s her job to deliver the bad news.
This still means I’ve spent £28 pounds more than I would normally have done on a SINGLE, and still need to buy a ticket back to Liverpool, which is – infuriatingly – the same as the original fare from the ticket office would have been minus a pound, £56.
Going to this wedding is going to cost me the same as the average honeymoon.
I know many people (six people) will say that I should have put up more of a fight but the fact is all I’d be doing is creating a noise in the carriage. It’s wasted energy. I could write a letter…. But this is the thing, we live in a stupid, strong, unbreakable capitalist world (in case you were wondering why I started the entry in such a vein) and there is nothing I, nor you, can do about it.
This is a sixth form essay but sometimes, even in the adult world, it still annoys you.
Had a decent evening in London anyway. Met A and a mutual old friend, Michelle in Holborn and we went to a favourite pancake restaurant called My Old Dutch. They had a limited wine list (three) and the only decent looking one was only available by the bottle so I ordered a bottle of it for myself as the girls were drinking white. After the whole ticket thing, and a hot stumble through town with my bags, I needed it and polished it all off in the same time it took to eat the pancake, more or less.
If this has been a rambling entry, it’s because I’m back at Michelle’s in Hoxton seeing as she’s got an empty spare room and I’m still feeling the effects of the wine earlier and the couple of pints we had in an Irish pub just down the road.
It’s half one in the morning too – which although is normally before my bedtime is probably a time I should be safely in the land on nod as tomorrow will be a long day. And a big one for Monica and Mark – they certainly have more pressing issues than Virgin Train’s rip-off strategies to dream about tonight.
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