ENDPAPERS
In Love with a Lion
By MARY HOLLAND
I cannot remember if, secure in my penury, ever thought wistfully that I would like to carry on like this myself. But by heaven, I know now. Every one of the jolly weekend jaunts I recom- mended to my readers means crossing water, and that means a plane or a boat, and no fiesta, no golf course, no Sunday morning concert any- where, is worth that. Even so, I quite often wonder during the course of an average home- bound year why it is quite such an undertaking to get to sensible, accessible places like Dublin or Paris and why I don't go there more often. But I only have to step into the coach for the journey to London airport for all the reasons to come hurtling back from my subconscious. It isn't just the herded discomfort of air travel, the lack of airport facilities for people flying, the waiting around and the length of time it takes. All these things contribute: but the real joy-killer is the flight itself. I cannot believe that it is possible for anyone actually to enjoy a plane journey. For myself I am miserable physically, spiritually and socially before, during and after the flight, which means that I must want to get somewhere very much indeed to take flying there in my stride. ,
Boats are obviously better on a long journey, but on a short one they tend to have much of the discomfort of the average aeroplane and in- evitably to keep you in the state of discomfort much longer. The only really desirable way of travelling is still the train, which can—and very occasionally does—cocoon you in comfort, separate you from the world at large, and allow you for a while to live that hankering old dream of slower, gracious living. A good long train journey should be able to pander to creature comforts in a way no other kind of transport can, justify your idling hours away, and have enough bogus Bond associations to make the process of travelling a pleasure in itself instead of just a means of getting from one place to another. This is the strong suit of trains and I hope it won't be jettisoned in the current rather desperate attempt to make rail travel seem functional and British Railways 'a bright, for- ward-looking concern.' In terms of speed and economy trains are almost certain to lose out every time to planes, though even the pretty average hell of a crowded second-class compart- ment on a familiarly dingy English train seems to me much sweeter than any aeroplane.
But I am alarmed at the current exhibition at the Design Centre on the new face of British Railways, where the striving after an effiCient mid-twentieth-century image—or 'Corporate Identity Programme for British Rail'—seems set on stamping out all the idiosyncratic and attrac- tive plush. The 'livery colours' will be rail grey and blue, and make the trains look rather like those you always see in films about people escaping from the dreariest iron curtain countries. The upholstery tends towards black PVC and even the newly uniformed attendant' wears a black plastic cap like a policeman in a play about totalitarianism. Sure, the lines look cleaner and more functional, but the romance seems to have been thrown out of the window of the clinically designed compartments.
This is all the odder because the publicity and advertising people still realise 'that what attracts most of us to long distance•trains is their glamour, the aura of nineteenth-century escape which they carry with them. It would be a pity if this were to be entirely lost in an orgy of planning, .which seems to be the idea as expressed in this: exhibi- tion. I say 'seems' because British Railways (or Rail) being what they are there isn't the slightest likelihood of their brave new projects being achieved in the foreseeable future. Some trains are being-painted in the new colours, but not all. Some old stations will be revamped. The name `British Rail' will be used extensively in publicity, but quite arbitrarily elsewhere. The new symbol of parallel arrows pointing in different•directions will appear on station facades, ship funnels and advertising. But, happiest of omens., it won't be used on trains. There the heraldic lion still be- strides his wheel and I for one hope that he and all he stands for will keep some foothold on our trains.
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