Alun Newman: It's a sign

When I didn’t have the super-early start for the Breakfast Radio Show, I used to get the train most days. After a few weeks, you start to notice the regular commuters. After a few more, you know where they like to sit. A few more weeks and you know whether they’ll eat, snooze or answer emails.

There was a fella on my train who always chose the same seat. He’d produce cereal, milk and a china bowl from his bag and enjoy his breakfast every morning. I can still hear his lightly clinking spoon.

Sadly, the train was often delayed and that's putting it kindly. How people made it regularly to London for high-powered meetings by 09:00 I’ll never know. Some might have made a few, but certainly not all.

On one occasion we were all waiting for our train. Then came the voice, “We’re sorry to announce that the ...” The voice started to explain that the train was delayed. Before she finished, a man, a regular, shouted at the LED display, “But you’re not sorry, are you? You’re not sorry at all.” I never saw him again. I think he may have gone over to the dark side and bought a car.

This week I was going to cycle home, but the heavens opened torrential rain, the kind that always arrives after a moment of sunshine. So, I decided to take my bike on the train. In all honesty, I hadn’t done this before.

The bike doesn’t fold up, and I didn’t want to be a nuisance to other commuters. As I waited on platform four, I remembered there are some trains with designated carriages for people with bikes, brilliant. I tried looking it up on the App, but the information was less than clear. So, I decided to interrupt a busy platform control officer or a dispatcher, I think, to ask.

He glanced up at the small LED display, the one that shows the next two trains, and said it was carriages four and five. I walked away satisfied, then I paused. How on earth did he know? I went back to ask. I expected him to say something along the lines of, “Twenty years’ experience, mate.” Instead, he said, “See the LED with your train time? Below it there’s a picture of the four carriages. Carriages four and five have a small, yet very bright, bike icon. Did you see it?” Yes. I could see it. I simply had never seen it before.

Now I will see it for the rest of my life. They, the trains, may not be perfect. But there’s clever boffins somewhere, quietly trying to make them the best they can be.

When I didn’t have the super-early start for the Breakfast Radio Show, I used to get the train most days. After a few weeks, you start to notice the regular commuters. After a few more, you know where they like to sit. A few more weeks and you know whether they’ll eat, snooze or answer emails.