I must say, for all the bad publicity the rail service in this country has been getting, you would have thought you could trust it to be just a teeny bit late when needed, wouldn't you?

But oh no. When my daughter had allowed adequate, but not generous, time to get from Stanstead Airport to Paddington to catch the 8.30pm to Plymouth it went dead on time and she missed it by just three minutes.

She had been held up on the way because the person who had dealt with her warrant and issued her rail tickets at Stanstead had failed to put my grandson on it as well, so each time she tried to go through various ticket machines she had to stop and explain the problem, wait for clearance and be issued with a 'comment' form.

At Paddington she asked at enquiries when the next train to Plymouth was.

'Don't you mean the next available train?' the man said before reluctantly imparting the information that it wasn't until 11.45pm.

This kind of reaction gives you a pretty big clue that you're not talking to a person who is going to put a great deal of effort into helping you.

And so it was, because when she asked if there was a train to Exeter instead, where I could pick her up, he said 'you can't just go changing your ticket on a whim, madam'.

Having used a great deal of willpower to stop herself whacking him one with her handbag, and any daughter of mine carries a very big handbag, she reported all this to me on the telephone with just a slight edge of hysteria in her voice.

Bumptious

I told her to go back to information and ask to speak to someone in authority.

This always smarts when your dealing with bumptious jumped up little Hitlers. If that failed, she should do what all we feminists can do if needs be. Burst into tears. Or better still, get my grandson to burst into tears as well.

In the event she didn't need to do any of this because the man had gone and his replacement was a nice lady who was sympathetic, said there was absolutely no problem about getting the next Exeter train which was in 20 minutes and insisted my daughter took a complaints form.

Which is why I could be found driving through torrential rain late on Monday night, missing the turning off the A30 to Exeter St David's station and ending up on the A38 heading for Plymouth trying to find somewhere I could turn round. And having already had to drive into Saltash to get enough petrol to go to Exeter.

Even when I got to the station at 12.45am and loaded up the passengers our troubles were not over.

Trying to negotiate Exeter's incomprehensible one-way system, which seems to have been designed by a sadistic non-driver, I was pulled over by a police car.

An officious police officer, who obviously hadn't taken his 'How to deal politely with the public without sounding patronising' exam, or if he had he hadn't passed it, informed me that I had made 'two lane mistakes'.

Water

Fighting an urge to say 'only two' I said we were trying to find the A30 again and he grudgingly told me how to, although I'm sure he would much rather have arrested us for being out after midnight without a man in the driving seat.

And that, my dears, was only day one of my holiday last week.

On Tuesday, having spent a day of recuperation, I happened to notice that the floor in the utility room was looking exceptionally shiny, as though someone had spent some considerable time buffing it up.

A second look revealed that the shine was actually three inches of water.

I reported this to my younger daughter who was upstairs and she yelled down 'is the water blue?', which puzzled me somewhat because all I was aware of was that it was wet and rapidly rising.

She explained that if it was blue it was from the lavatory and was bad news. I looked closer, and it was.

For the next hour there was a certain amount of bedlam, because any household emergency brings onlookers, including a small grandson who wanted to look for tadpoles down the sewer (don't ask), cats who walked delicately through the water on tip-toe and glared a lot, everyone else offering advice and bottles of bleach and a chorus of 'don't flush the loo' ringing through the house.

Then we decided we had to call South West Water.

Now that's life really. One moment you are sitting cosily in a home where everything seems to be working, happily contemplating a delicious supper which is gently bubbling in the oven, the next moment you are discussing you family's lavatorial habits with a complete stranger on the end of a telephone.

Nasty

I must admit that over the years I've said some pretty nasty things about South West Water. Not about their staff, of course, but about the amount of cash they extract out of us each year for providing what we naive folk think of as liquid given free by the bounty of Mother Nature (I know it's more complicated than that so no letters please).

However, in this case, I must praise the staff who were helpful, concerned, kept ringing back and actually held on while my daughter ran next door to ask if the neighbours had problems.

This in itself was a brave bit of public relations, because we all thought she would take the opportunity to have a bit of a chat and perhaps a cup of tea as well. Which we suspect she did.

Heavy rain had caused a lot of problems for SWW and they kept apologising for not arriving, finally saying they might be there by midnight unless we could possibly wait until the next day.

We could, and next morning there were more calls, including several from the driver by radio phone saying they were on their way. They dealt with our blockage swiftly when they did arrive.

This is the sort of service the rail network could well take a few hints from.

Insisted

To try to get her ticket sorted out for the return journey my daughter made several calls to the rail helpline who all basically said 'of course there's no problem just go to Plymouth station and they'll sort it out for you'. Unfortunately at Plymouth station there lives a twin of the man at Paddington, who made it quite clear he wasn't going to sort out anything.

He kept repeating 'we didn't issue the ticket' like a robot and tried to make my daughter pay again. When he had gone, having only narrowly avoided being biffed by a handbag, his assistant (a woman) came over and said not to worry, wrote a note explaining the problem so my daughter could show it to ticket collectors, and insisted we took a complaints form.

My daughter went home with a sheaf of complaint and comment forms, which believe you me she's going to be filling in. Just the very thought of it has cheered her up no end.