BARRIE HUDSON'S COLUMN : Tracks of my tears

I HAD to make a train journey from Swindon to Bristol the other day.

As Great Western Railway and the railway system in general tend to take regular bashings, I was hoping for a positive experience.

“Surely,” I said to myself, “not every experience can be a negative one. Perhaps we don’t get the true picture because we tend to hear about people’s bad experiences. They can’t all be bad experiences, so by the law of averages a given trip on a given service at a given time must be a decent one.”

Filled with optimism and looking forward to writing something nice about the trains for once, I headed to the station with my partner.

We then attempted to buy our tickets at the machine, but it kept tricking us into buying one ticket instead of two.

“No problem,” we said. “Perhaps we’re not tech-savvy enough to appreciate the finer points of navigating the menus.

Ah well, there’s always the booking office – we’ll head there.”

On arrival we discovered that we were not the only ones to give the machine the swerve.

There were at least half a dozen of us in a queue to see the precisely one person on duty. The other windows were all closed, and the person being served seemed intent on complex negotiations about some matter requiring a great deal of specialist knowledge. The cheapest options for return travel to Ulan Batur, perhaps, while avoiding Wednesdays, saints’ days and Reading.

With only 10 minutes or so before our train was due to leave, we headed back to the machine and made a more determined effort. Finally, after a couple more attempts, we cracked it, grabbed our tickets and headed for the turnstiles.

It was there that somebody told us our train was cancelled, which meant a wait of an hour and the complete knackering of our plans.

I’d like to tell you what the cause of the delay was, but the announcement was overridden by a much louder one imploring passengers to contact the authorities if anything about their experience didn’t seem right.

I was just dialling the number when my partner told me the message was intended for people to report suspected terrorist activity rather than things just being the usual load of old rubbish we’ve been suffering for years.

In a way, though, there are positives to be drawn from the situation.

One is that in this fast-moving world of change and uncertainty, our railway system is reassuringly consistent in its utter disastrousness.

The other positive is as follows. If I am ever in a position of power, I am positive that any politician exhorting us to use public transport and criticising people who do not will automatically be stripped of their driving licence.

They will also be forbidden to travel as a passenger on any domestic flight, in any private car or on any motorcycle, moped, scooter or skateboard.

Remember education, education, education?

DO you recall the old riddle about a door not being a door when it’s ajar?

Or the lesser-known one about a lamp not being a lamp when it’s aglow?

Something similar has cropped up at St Luke’s School in Swindon during the last couple of weeks.

It’s along the lines of: “When is irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school not irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school?”

Can you guess the answer? Here’s a clue. The answer is not: “When parents do it.”

As we all know, when a parent keeps their child off school for so much as a day or two, they are guilty of a horrific act of abuse.

That is why the council, like councils across the country, frequently orders such parents to pay fines and threatens to drag them through the public humiliation of court proceedings if they decline to pay.

It’s got nothing to do with treating decent parents as cash cows, and anybody who suggests otherwise perpetuates a monstrous slur.

The councils do it because they care about children. They know that if a child is kept away from school for a few days’ holiday, or to attend a family wedding or be at the bedside of a poorly loved one, they are guilty of terrible, damaging irresponsibility.

Even if the child has an otherwise perfect attendance record, and even if they are easily able to catch up with the day or few days they miss by borrowing somebody’s notes, their education is ruined.

Where once they might have been on a fast track to, say, become globally respected neurosurgeons by the age of 26, they will now be doomed to end up living under a motorway bridge, drinking paint thinner and eating roadkill thrown over the barrier by impacts with trucks.

However, if children are kept off school for days or weeks by a staff shortage which, mysteriously, nobody in authority seems to have seen coming, prepared for or be capable of dealing with in a timely manner, that clearly does not blight the lives of pupils – not even if they have special educational needs.

That’s why parents can’t haul the authorities into court or extract money from them.

Our riddle, you’ll recall, was: “When is irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school not irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school?”

The answer, of course, is: “When somebody in authority does it.”

Remember education, education, education?

DO you recall the old riddle about a door not being a door when it’s ajar?

Or the lesser-known one about a lamp not being a lamp when it’s aglow?

Something similar has cropped up at St Luke’s School in Swindon during the last couple of weeks.

It’s along the lines of: “When is irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school not irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school?”

Can you guess the answer? Here’s a clue. The answer is not: “When parents do it.”

As we all know, when a parent keeps their child off school for so much as a day or two, they are guilty of a horrific act of abuse.

That is why the council, like councils across the country, frequently orders such parents to pay fines and threatens to drag them through the public humiliation of court proceedings if they decline to pay.

It’s got nothing to do with treating decent parents as cash cows, and anybody who suggests otherwise perpetuates a monstrous slur.

The councils do it because they care about children. They know that if a child is kept away from school for a few days’ holiday, or to attend a family wedding or be at the bedside of a poorly loved one, they are guilty of terrible, damaging irresponsibility.

Even if the child has an otherwise perfect attendance record, and even if they are easily able to catch up with the day or few days they miss by borrowing somebody’s notes, their education is ruined.

Where once they might have been on a fast track to, say, become globally respected neurosurgeons by the age of 26, they will now be doomed to end up living under a motorway bridge, drinking paint thinner and eating roadkill thrown over the barrier by impacts with trucks.

However, if children are kept off school for days or weeks by a staff shortage which, mysteriously, nobody in authority seems to have seen coming, prepared for or be capable of dealing with in a timely manner, that clearly does not blight the lives of pupils – not even if they have special educational needs.

That’s why parents can’t haul the authorities into court or extract money from them.

Our riddle, you’ll recall, was: “When is irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school not irremediably blighting the education of children by keeping them off school?”

The answer, of course, is: “When somebody in authority does it.”

bhudson@swindonadvertiser.co.uk