The National Rail website site is fantastic. You go to “Planning your journey”, type in your starting point and destination, the date and approximate time of travel, and press go.

It comes back with a selection of train times that will suit you. You can then choose a service, click a button, and it will send a text message with the train times to your mobile phone. Its an absolutely wonderful use of technology.

You can hear the “but” coming a mile away can’t you?

Its a wonderful use of technology, right up until you arrive at the station to find that THE TRAIN DOESN’T FLINKING EXIST!

OK, so maybe engineering works meant that the timtable go re-jigged or something? No, it wasn’t that – this train isn’t listed on any of the regular timetables up on boards all over the station. Perhaps its on the updated Winter Timetable then? The ones that don’t kick in until the 12th of December – about a fortnight from now. Pick up a leaflet, check it out, and… no, its not in there either.

I have no idea where National Rail got their information from. When I eventually got to the next station, I found that my connecting train (that I’d long since missed) never actually existed either.

All of which added up to make that brilliant use of technology completely and utterly bloody useless. Bah.