I woke up early this morning because my back was hurting, but I stayed in bed for a while reading and listening to Radio 4. There is a short program called a point of view, this week Clive James spoke about the way that we have to keep messing around with our language. Some of his talk was railway related, perhaps a bit overstated, but thought provoking and amusing. This is part of what he had to say
"Not long ago, at Paddington, I ran to catch a train that was called First. The long version of the name is First Great Western, which is already bad enough because it suggests the possible existence of a Second Great Western. But the First Great Western company insists on referring to itself and its trains as just First.
My problem, as I ran with a heavy bag in each hand from the barrier end of the platform, was to find the first second class carriage in a train all of whose carriages were marked First. I cursed First in the worst language at my command, but my outburst at First was nothing beside the imprecations I rained on One.
Yes, what used to be simply called Anglia Railways is now even more briefly, but far less simply, called One. This leaves the way clear for the railway station announcer to inform potential passengers that one One train will leave from platform two and the other One train will leave from platform three.
If the first One train leaves at twenty to one it's the twenty to one One train and if the other one leaves at ten to one it's ten to one on that it's the one One train one actually wanted but one couldn't understand the announcement.
What happens when you have to change from a First train to a One train I leave to you, but you might face a situation where you should catch the first First train if you want to change to the one One train that will get you to the mental hospital before you crack up.
Except, of course, that it's never now called a train, it's called a service, just as the passenger is now a customer. Linguistic philosophers have already written theses about how the vocabulary of marketing has invaded the realm of transport, which logically should have no need of marketing, because people know exactly what they want and demand nothing except for the means of transport to be safe, clean and on time.
But the language of marketing spreads inexorably because it gives those who use it a chance to be creative, which everybody has been taught is a desirable thing to be.
In fact, the last thing that a passenger who has already been outraged by being called a customer wants to hear when he is sitting, or probably standing, in a train running late, or probably not running at all, is a voice on the public address system calling the train a service, when providing a service is exactly what it is currently in the process of not doing.
Nor does the voice on the public address system show any sign, once it gets started, of wanting to shut up. The voice supplies the information that the buffet car is situated in the middle of the service, for the benefit of anyone who thought that it might be travelling along separately some way behind the service. The voice apologises for the delay caused to your journey, a way of softening the fact that the delay had been caused, not to your journey, but to you.
The voice continues to audition for a career in broadcasting by pointing out that the first One service to arrive at the next station will be the last One service to continue any further until the engineering works have been completed. Where did all this start? Well, it probably started when the name British Railways contracted to British Rail
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