Sorry, your train of thought is cancelled

THE DOCTOR shows great patience as I second-guess his advice with my new-found knowledge about cholesterol matters. I rabbit on about whether it is only the low-density lipoprotein we should be aiming to reduce, or the other stuff as well. How these doctors' spirits must sink when they find patients talking back in this inconsequential way.

I warm to this fellow very much: he asked whether I had any inkling why I felt better, and then expressed a gracious thankfulness and modest surprise that anything a doctor prescribed had done any good - as his stuff seems to have done.

Pleased with him and myself, I made my way to the station at a purposeful saunter. I had spotted a notice saying that BR's regional manager for my bit of the cross- country service would be available for interview. I thought to berate him about cancelled, late and crowded trains, leaking stereos and feet on seats. I was feeling rather as a lion might, in his cage at the Colosseum, looking forward to the Christians.

The poor chap was a good half- hour late. His train had been delayed. I roared my unseemly pleasure at this rich turn-up for the books. At my haughtiest, I regaled him with my many years of regular and expensive travel on the train set with which he was pleased to play from time to time. I sketched out my intention to embarrass him with some international comparisons from my personal experience. I intended to trot out my insight that in Japan, the humblest porter would commit hara-kiri if a rural funicular should happen to discombobulate the passengers on a pre-dawn one-car milk train by being so much as a heartbeat late. I forbore to point out that even in post-Mussolini Italy the gorgeously-attired, self-obsessed railwaymen deigned to wrench themselves away from coffee and pastry in time to chug their way in the lee of Apennine slopes.

In my stride, I would have liked to point out that when I was sent to gloat over the collapse of communism, I had found that even the Stalin-stunned railwaymen of Eastern Europe ran their trains in a way which suggested they had some distant sense of there existing, at least in theory, a people's timetable. Instead, I settled on a brief excursion into the reliability, cleanliness and esprit de corps of French railways.

He stopped my flow and quietly pointed out that he was married to a French woman and travelled a good deal in France himself. Further, BR had given him a two- year secondment to French Railways to widen his experience. Moreover, speaking fluent French he was well able to know exactly what was going on around him in that country. He allowed himself the suggestion that he would rather manage the polite, amiable and conscientious men under his command than some, at least, of the French railwaymen he had known, whatever else were the virtues of that great country and its trains.

He reached into his briefcase for a bulletin in which was logged the cause for any of the recent and rather rare delays or cancellations of any train in his patch which I cared to mention. Was it the one delayed by a suicide? One of several delayed because lorries had smacked into bridges?

His own had been delayed by a faulty point, a thing he assured me could happen to a train anywhere in the world, especially where the smallest risk to safety entailed proper engineering attention. He had, of course, as usual on entering the train, even before it was late, announced his presence and availability for interview with any passenger. When the train was indeed discovered to be behind time, he had used its phone to ring ahead on behalf of any distressed passenger.

He finished by pointing out that passengers and revenue had been quadrupled on his Cardiff to Manchester route via Hereford by running more trains, and by detailing the new rolling stock and services we were to get.

I left the meeting reeling. Come privatisation, I might just be first in line for a couple of shares.

Mind you, the signs are not good that I could do so sensible a thing. I find myself unable to respond to the letter reminding me that I had promised to buy a chunk of Ledbury cattle market. And that in spite of just having read that beef fat is awfully good for reducing the kind of cholesterol I am on the brink of believing needs to be reduced. Beef could be making a comeback, and I might easily fail to be in on the ground floor.

I have never cared enough about money, I suspect. I am, in fact, careless about it. The other day, I was waiting for the Lugg Valley Motors bus to take me into Hereford. A villager stopped and offered me a lift instead. No, I said, grandly. 'Use it or lose it', that's my motto.

The pity of it went beyond the quid I would have to spend on the bus. He's a nice bloke and his car smells of cigarette smoke, which I now find very exotic. If I fall to drinking again, I intend to do some with him.

Anyway, Ernie and his venerable coach rumbled along more or less on time with much flashing of headlights. As usual, his cassette player and its country & western were entertaining the old dears and the few punks on board.

Fumbling for my change, I accidentally tipped a penny or two into the swing-bin into which he exhorts us to dispose of our rubbish, and I did not feel like scrabbling around in the fag-ash, orange peel and God-knows-what to retrieve them.

I was minding my own business behind the Financial Times (which always makes me feel very worldly) and trying to work out if I understood anything which Sam Brittan writes (which I do not), when a fellow passenger came along with my money. He had stooped to conquer on my behalf.

I HAVE got into the habit of defending the chemicals industry against Greenpeace, as part of my efforts to describe the future of the world and how it might be better than the millennialist moaners say, and thought to pop into the excellent Catalyst Museum, which is devoted to the industry on the Mersey. Its observation tower looks down on reclaimed land, more of the green deserts of grass and bits of pretty hedges where once money was made and which will cover half of England in a couple of decades.

There was, as quite often in that part of the world, a fairly pungent smell in the air (reputedly from a nearby glue factory). Anxious to pick up ammunition about the glories of the men in white coats, I was especially interested by an exhibit which asked you, in a hands-on, scratch-and- sniff sort of way, to identify particular fragrances made locally.

Pressing button A, I identified coffee easily enough. Used, the display said, to make supermarkets smell of, well, coffee.

God help us: so that's why we need these vast industrial plants, hauling materials out of the ground and chucking muck in our rivers. Perhaps I should send off my subscription to Friends of the Earth after all.