Could someone fix it?

A rockfall on the line between London and Lewes isn’t your usual reason for arriving home late, but that was last week’s explanation, and that’s the great thing about modern passenger directives – they really do provide the realism with which to imbue your excuses. So information, even too much of it, is a handy thing when things go wrong.

When things go right, though, the less said the better. The commentary accompanying our progress could be worse – at least it’s only an audio, not an audio-visual, hell – but just imagine that little piece of silence which might exist, for example, if Cooksbridge and Plumpton were left to shoulder responsibility for their own shortcomings.

At least with a human at the microphone, we get inflection, variation and a filter of sorts: a godsend when the senses have been dulled and deadened by over-familiarity. So, the other week when the conductor chose to preface his remarks with ‘I know I tell you this every day but…’ I sensed, at last, an acknowledgement that we’ve been in this situation before. I’m grateful for that.

As for the scrolling equivalents of those verbal communications, they brook no human intervention, no bending to circumstance. And, worst of all, no correction. For months now, we on the 7.42 have been subjected to a typo that snags my eye at regular intervals – a hellish loop that seems beyond the sphere of human influence. If anyone from Southern is reading this, please, please could someone fix it?