Disincentive to use the trains

Although I am a confirmed car and bike nut, I am also an enthusiastic user of public transport. It's so agreeable to look out of the window as you fly over rivers and roll through the rolling countryside. You can talk to your fellow passengers (they are a lively and fascinating lot) or you can have a nap if the day job has been strenuous. Since, embracing rail travel between Liskeard and Plymouth, I have become something of a leisure driver and enjoy being the behind much more. I am there because I want to be, not because I have to be.

Rail ticket prices rose by about 6% at the start of this year but even with petrol at about 85p a litre I still think rail travel is preferable. Punctuality has improved in the seven years I've been using the train and there's less crowding. Fewer trains than seven years ago but still less crowding, which must indicate a migration to the roads.

Last week this insidious little sign appeared on the fence at Liskeard station announcing that a tariff will be imposed for car parking there from 1st February. Subsequent enquiries revealed that the daily charge will be ₤2 although a season ticket may be available for ₤370 a year.

How these charges will be paid is unclear.

How they will be afforded is even less certain.

Many of my fellow passengers are now seriously considering driving into Plymouth. Long stay parking in Liskeard costs ₤1.50 a day but there’s a fair walk down from the town and an even less fair walk back up at the end of the day, especially in the wind and the rain. I don’t think local residents will appreciate us blocking them in at 7.30 in the morning if we try to spread ourselves around the nearest residential areas.

I live some way out of Liskeard in the foothills of Bodmin Moor but, a few years ago, experimented with buses to the station for a week. This added 45 minutes to my journey time if the connections worked. If it didn't - as happened twice on the five days of my experiment - a taxi at ₤9 one way was the only option. So although I tried the buses I can't honestly recommend them.

I have written to my MP, Colin Breed, because I believe the rail companies are imposing ticket price increases by stealth. Rail prices are regulated by the government but I bet parking at stations isn’t. A suit at First Great Western will probably earn a fat bonus this year for exploiting rail travellers but on environmental grounds this doesn’t make sense.

Giving something back to the reader

Here is Mark George with his very own copy of The Wormton Lamb. That's my reflection in the window behind him with the camera and we are on the 0734 commuter service from Liskeard to Plymouth.

Why's he got a copy when it won't be out until Easter? Mark was one of the very first people to read The Wormton Lamb. Readers are very important for writers and now that I have copies of The Wormton Lamb to distribute to people, the first one has gone to Mark George.

Much of The Wormton Lamb was worked out on the commuter trains from Liskeard to Plymouth. Although I'm a confirmed piston-head I enjoy commuting by train in the morning. I'd already begun scribbling down my ideas in old diaries during the journey and it wasn't long after that I started to string together some sentences in Microsoft Word and printed them off so that I could correct them on the train. Whenever the train was late, out would come the early drafts.

On more than one occasion, this provoked comments from my fellow would-be passengers pn the platform at Devonport station, something along the lines of, "What do you think you're doing? Writing a book?"

When I explained that -- funnily enough -- I was indeed writing a book, some of my fellow would-be passengers expressed an interest in reading it. I think they were being polite and probably were a bit bored. However, after passing round some of my sheets, they wanted to see some more and, eventually, two of my fellow commuters got to see the vast majority of The Wormton Lamb. One of them was Mark George.

I encourage my readers to make comments and provide feedback and what I received proved invaluable. For instance, Mark would pencil comments in the margin. Sometimes he would say "I didn't understand this" or "I didn't see the point in that". At other times, he would say "I really like this!" or "This made me laugh."

This kind of feedback must have had a significant influence on my development as a writer. Eventually, my regular readers saw all of The Wormton Lamb apart from the very end. I did it on purpose. At a critical point in the narrative, I handed out a questionnaire and asked them what they thought was going to happen next. I wanted to see what sort of promise I had made to my readers and, using the results of this little questionnaire, I reworked The Wormton Lamb and made sure, as far as I could, that the ending delivered what I'd set them up to expect.

Unfortunately, both my readers stopped using the trains before I've finished the complete story. I had sort of kept in touch with Mark George over the intervening years. He had moved away to work and, although his family stayed at home in Roche, he was "up the line."

I e-mailed him to keep him abreast of developments with my writing but imagine my surprise when one day, a few weeks ago, I saw him grinning at me on the train. It was just like old times. He'd come back down West to work -- which is just as well because he has something like 15 children. It might be less but they seem to get about a lot.

The timing couldn't have been better.

And today I was able to give him the finished product, a signed and numbered copy of The Wormton Lamb. It's a small token of my appreciation for all the help he gave me in the creative process. He had a quick flick through and recognised some of the names but the last time Mark read anything of my work was three years ago.

Mark George is also a published author. He actually beat me to it for his dissertation for his Ph.D. came out a couple of years ago, although I like to think that I might have outsold him by now.

Anyway, he's now got a copy of my book with my thanks.

I hope he likes the ending.

What I want to do before Christmas, is find my other reader. I know he lived in St Germans and maybe next weekend I shall make enquiries a post office and turn up on his doorstep with something he probably isn't expecting but I hope that he'll like.

Pity poor OPEC

The price of unleaded has fallen below ₤1 a litre. According to a net comparison site, it's down to 97.9p a litre around Liskeard. We are told that this price level won’t last because OPEC are cutting production. The low prices will encourage people to fill up. Demand will increase and the economists (who’ve made a mess of everything already) will hike the prices again due to the knicker elasticity of demand.

But I remember how a few years ago OPEC were lowering prices because they were worried that consumers might find alternatives to oil.

I reckon they now know that people will be switching away from oil and suing hydrogen or bio-fuels. The writing is on the wall for the oil industry even for plastics. At The Stranglers gig at Exeter University drinks were served from wibbly-wobbly glasses made not of plastic but a clear material made from plant starch.

So spare a kind though for the men of OPEC. They've only got a few years left so squeeze as much money out of us as they can. And so far, the oil price is still falling even after production's been cut. Is oil already yesterday's fuel?