Thursday 22nd November

I had to buy train tickets for my three eldest grandchildren who are coming down for a day just before Christmas.  I looked the journey up on the internet, and could have bought them there and waited for them to be delivered, but decided it might be best to go to St. Pancras and buy them over the counter.  I hate waiting for tickets to arrive by post, sometimes one is lucky and they arrive in a day or two, but I have had to wait until perilously close to the departure date sometimes.

And once or twice I have printed the prices out from the internet but when I arrived at the train station a couple of hours later those tickets were no longer available.  So, I was at least prepared for a degree of disappointment but was more than pleasantly surprised.  The woman behind the counter was so helpful, and actually seemed to enjoy her job – a rarity in itself these days.  She looked at my print-out and said, “Let’s see if we can do better than this.”  And she did, she calculated that if I buy a Family Railcard, naming the eldest grandchild who is just 17, as one of the named adults I could save myself more than twenty pounds.  She even filled in the form for me.  Now that is what I call service.  But actually it was more than that, her manner was so pleasant and helpful that it made the whole, slightly stressful, business of buying the tickets a real pleasure.  So thank-you, unnamed lady; you made my day.