Finally, an end to severe delays to my journey

This is the story of how my love affair with trains ended.

Hailing from small-town Canada, as I do, I was naturally pre-disposed to having a very romantic view of trains. Unfortunately, since moving to England, the relationship between myself and trains has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

The trains I used to see in Northern BC were mostly transport trains. There was a passenger train that came every couple of days, but you would have had a hard time finding any Canadians enjoying a ride. For some reason, these passenger trains seemed to be reserved for Japanese or German tourists, who must have felt that it's okay for a journey to take twice as long and be twice as expensive as it would in a car. Still, I always liked the passenger trains, and, if they went anywhere I wanted to go, I probably would have used them more often.

When I first moved to England, I was enthralled with trains. I wasn't particularly fond of the early mornings I had to endure to catch the right train to be at work on time, but I did enjoy being on the train. I could sit back and read the newspaper without having to worry too much about what was happening around me. And the countryside, if you slow down to take a look, is really rather pretty.

I also knew the train was a very environmentally-friendly way to get to work. With my partner Dave already driving a car, it didn't make sense to me to have two people in the same family poluting the air and clogging the roads.

But the train network slowly wears you down. Even the most environmentally-conscious person can be driven away from trains in England.

So, as I prepare to ditch the train and take up driving (as I will need to be mobile in my new job), here are 15 reasons why I believe I won't miss trains.

Fifteen things I won't miss about my morning train commute:

1. The 7.44am to 7.45am sprint from platform 4 to platform 8 to make my connection. I swear the train operators make connections as awkward as possible to make things “sporty”.

2. Being stuck on a train that is broken down metres from a platform. It's an emotionally draining experience -- elaborate escape plans are hatched, bouts of never-before-experienced claustrophobia make you jittery, and your idea to ask everyone to just get out and push seems like a brilliant plan.

3. Sitting next to someone who, halfway through the 8am to 8.30am commute, pulls out an egg and onion sandwich. Who eats eggs and onions before noon? And if you did, would you do it in public? Seriously folks. This needs to stop.

4. The £2 coffee that tastes like diesel fuel. A coffee can be considered an extra tax that should be factored in while budgeting for a train journey. When you're waiting on a soggy or frozen platform at 7.30am, it’s a little pick-you-up that’s hard to resist.

5. The First Great Western train guard who asks to see your ticket five times on a 25-minute journey. To be fair, I wouldn’t be able to remember whom I checked and whom I didn’t either, but this lady is just nuts. She walks up behind you and yells, “tickets and passes!” at the top of her lungs, which never ceases to scare the crap out of you, and pushes through the carriages demanding tickets even when people are sandwiched together and can barely get to their pockets. Really unnecessary.

6. Anybody who sits next to you and coughs without covering his or her mouth. If I wanted to contract a cold, I would have licked the seat before I sat down.

7. Really grumpy men at “information” booths on the train networks. I recall once going to Waterloo station and approaching one of these booths. When I asked about the trains for Reading, the man didn’t speak to me, instead simply pointing in the direction of the information screens, which were not displaying anything about Reading. I guess they use the word “information” in the loosest possible sense.

8. People who place bags on the seat next to them at peak times when the train is full. I personally like to head straight for those seats, ignoring the few empty ones that may be found. “Hi!” I like to say cheerily. “Is anyone sitting there?” as if it’s not obvious the person just doesn’t want to sit next to anyone.

9. The train toilet smell that seems to permeate entire carriages. Particularly on Virgin trains, where I think people take advantage of the longer journeys to have a sit down. That’s all I’m going to say. It’s indescribably awful.

10. The recorded voice that tells you that your train has been delayed or cancelled. “We’re extremely sorry for the severe delay this will cause to your journey” somehow doesn’t sound sincere when it’s obviously a recorded message, and most likely produced by a touch of a button, or automatically generated without human thought behind it at all.

11. The annual above-inflation price hikes that I’ve had to endure. This affects both my commute and my ability to have a social life. Living within an hour of London would have its perks if it didn’t put me in debt just to get there.

12. Drunk schoolgirls. Okay so I was probably a really obnoxious drunk when I was 16, but at least I didn’t go on trains and subject total strangers to my antics. And they always come out of the woodwork at the most unexpected times. Like Sunday afternoons when things should be quiet. I once saw a bunch of schoolgirls spraying perfume onto their clothes and into their mouths to mask the potent alcohol stench. I’m sure their parents were wholly unsuspecting when they were met with that toxic combination of smells.

13. Kids who watch videos on their mobile phones with the sound turned up. Just as much as I don’t like sitting next to drunk schoolgirls, I don’t want to listen to sober schoolgirls listening to drunk schoolgirls on a video. I also don’t want to hear ridiculously bad hip-hop through tiny speakers that are not designed to generate good quality sound. What’s wrong with watching videos on a TV or computer screen or listening to music through headphones or on a stereo?

14. Train staff members who do not have a clue what’s going on. The other day, I asked three different train staff members whether there would be engineering works affecting my journey on a Sunday and I got three different answers. I got a completely different answer from a sign, and yet another answer from the newspaper (which, I assume, was generated from a First Great Western or South West Trains press release).

15. The fact that my journey to work costs me 32p/mile, and more than £150/month, a price that, if you include car insurance, petrol and tax, is more expensive than driving. When I was briefly commuting to Leatherhead, I spent more than a quarter of my annual salary on train fare. Where else in the developed world do you get so royally screwed over?

Murders made more evil by society's reaction

As the story of the murdered women in Ipswich, England, unfolds, I am reminded of the situation in Vancouver, Canada, where a trial for the murder of six prostitutes is about to begin.

It saddens me that, in both the Ipswich and the Vancouver cases, women disappeared without causing much of a stir simply because they were at bottom of the social ladder. It’s not a very good reflection of society that it takes the death of more than one prostitute to grab our attention.

In Vancouver, a man called Robert Pickton, who used to be a pig farmer in Port Coquitlam, outside Vancouver, has been charged with the murder of six sex-trade workers from Vancouver’s downtown eastside. He has also been charged with 20 further counts of first-degree murder, and may be tried for these at a later date.

BC judge Justice James Williams ruled that the Pickton trial could be divided into two parts because it would make the trial less complicated and there would be less chance of a mistrial. He also said, according to the CBC, the evidence in these six cases – the alleged murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey – was "materially different" than the others.

Obviously, with the trial about to start, there are few details in the public sphere.

What is known is that between 40 and 60 women have disappeared from Vancouver’s downtown eastside since the late 1970s. (It was initially thought the number of women missing was closer to 60, but several women on the police-held missing persons’ list have contacted authorities. There could be others who have moved away and simply not told friends and family their whereabouts).

It wasn’t until 1999 that police in Vancouver gave any indication that they suspected a serial killer could be responsible.

Families of the missing women have alleged that Vancouver police ignored evidence that a serial killer was at work. The families have also said police neglected the cases because many of the women were prostitutes and drug addicts.

Police in Ipswich, England, have been much quicker to declare that a serial killer could be at work. I think the reason for this is because the murders in Ipswich have happened in quick succession. The three Ipswich women who have died, and the other two who seem to be missing, disappeared in the past two months, whereas the Vancouver sex-trade workers disappeared, one by one, over decades.

Still, I can’t help but think that, in both cases, the deaths of these women were treated differently than the deaths of people in other social groups.

If between 40 and 60 women went missing from an affluent area in Vancouver, then police would have undoubtedly acted much more quickly.

And if the women in Ipswich were professionals, rather than prostitutes, their murders would have been a much bigger deal, both in the media, and to police. In Ipswich, it took two deaths - and a third cemented it - before people started to make a fuss.

Of course, one must consider that prostitutes live a much more dangerous life than the average woman. They are often drug addicts, and are often cut off from family support. And, obviously, they place themselves in danger when they walk the streets at night, meeting with strangers.

Still, these are desperate women. They’re on the streets not because they want to be there, but because their lives have been taken on a dangerous course for one reason or another, and they feel like they have no choice. They need food to eat and to sustain their addictions. They see no other way.

And in Ipswich and Vancouver, someone has, or several persons have, done unspeakably evil things to these women. By not thinking of these women's lives as equal to the lives of those people at the top of the social ladder, we have betrayed them. It is a situation that we, as a society, should not, cannot, tolerate ever again.