The rock being Brixton 'ill, the hard place being deepest darkest Sussex.
The constraint being the railway network.
In my role as Gert Cottage Entertainment Manager I am aiming for third time lucky in respect of planing a day out. I planned Hever Castle, and was up half the night before and too weak on the day. I planned Chichester but Jimmy was hitting the slough of despond in the ongoing cough-cold-lurgy of Spring 2008.
I thought, the weather is set fair. A day out for Friday, I thought. I have selected a place to go where the main attraction is ten minutes walk from the railway station. An hour and half train ride form my local station (Streatham Hill). National Rail says I might have to buy two separate tickets because through tickets may not be available. I would be surpised...I have bought tickets for more remote and obscure destinations than a major Sussex cathedral city.
I checked the fare. £41.10 per adult is the cheapest return. I gulped a bit. I could go to Manchester or Leeds and back for less. Sussex is a day out, not Inter City. I investigated further. Oh, look there are all sorts of cheaper tickets, with attractive names like Mily Molly Mandy, Looby-Loo and Big Fat Rosie. Or they might as well be for all the meaning they convey.
I have read on blogs about the utter confusion of rail tickets. To be honest, it has never happened to me. Either I plan so much in advance that I get really cheap deals on Inter City, especially when I can be bit flexible. Or I make journeys whose cost are really just pocket money - Brighton and Southend are inconsequential amounts. However, uncharacteristically, I have the humility to realise that just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
I understand about dynamic pricing of tickets, and how the price adjusts to reflect relative demand and propinquity, an attempt to risk manage market fluctuations and maximise income. It's a complex calculation but a simple concept.
My ideal would be to get a train out of Clapham Junction as early as possible after the peak fares have finished. This would be on Friday. My intention would be to leave London in the morning and return in the evening, in both cases going against what I assume to be the peak flow. In effect I will be ballast, as they have to move the carriages anyway*. So the price is irrelevant. They have a captive audience on the upline in the morning, equally captive down in the evening. Yet I am being offered tickets whose numbers are limited by capacity. Hint: if there are capacity limits on the ballast train, surely there would be severe overcrowding on the commuting train?
I had read that it has been decreed from on high that confusing and rip-off names for rail fares are being abolished. Turns out, not yet. We have to wait until Septemebr before being presented with a simple three-point choice: travel when you want, pay a lot; pay weeks in advance and get it for a song; avoid peak time and save a bit.
To be honest, it's not really that I object to paying a price for the convenience, although £85, before admissions and refreshments, is a bit steep. It's the complexity of the ifs and buts and the feeling that the ifsandbuts are not dictated by logic. It ought to be a no-brianer to get the train to the nether regions of Sussex, so much quicker and safer, especially as we consider a good meal and real ales or fine wines a vital part of a day out. I wish I could just roll up at Streatham Hill on Friday and ask for two return tickets and feel confident that the price I get is a fair price. But I already have a nagging feeling in my mind that I might end up being ripped off.
* I first observed this on the London Tilbury and Southend. Each morning crowded 12-carriage trains would thunder crawl into the city, an dcome out again, as deserted as the Marie Celeste. By about half three or four o'clock, empty twelve carriage trains, some in service some not would emerge from the Shoeburyness Trainsheds like nocturnal creatures blinking from their burrows, to pound the miles to the City to return packed to the gunwales. I pondered why they couldn't spend the day grazing in a field in London. Whetehr deliberately or happenstance, loco sheds tend to be remote from London
