Demanding an Upgrade

I found out recently that I'm allowed to travel first class on the train for work, provided, of course that I book it far enough in advance. So that it costs about the same as a week's rent each way, rather than the equivalent of the GDP of Chad each way. Thus I find myself, for only the second time, traversing the country in first class on a Tuesday evening. Tuesday! A school night! This feels in some way wrong; as if one should only go first class on a Friday evening, like a proper commuter, travelling home to one's family. Kicking off one's shoes because of the extra leg room and luxuriating in the fact that the working week is done and, dammit, Greg, you have earned this.

So, what does the extra billionty pounds buy you, on the East Coast line? Well, for a start, it buys you two different coloured seats to gaze at. Yes, that's right, when most of them are empty because of the prohibitive cost, why should you have to look at plain old navy blue all the time? You want more! You want a choice of colours at which to stare! So you also have buff-coloured seats. I am currently the sole occupier of a quad of buff-coloured seats, and a table. This is exciting, although I have to say that I'm wondering if the single seat, rows of which are placed by the window opposite, with a table that, because of the sheer quantity of room, wouldn't be nudging into your beer gut if you had one, might not be even more exciting. They just look a bit more, you know, exclusive. There is no danger that your feet would touch anyone else's (as mine had to, the very first time I travelled first class, two weeks ago. My horror was compounded when, on my return journey, a man who seemed to be suffering from advanced TB - coughing, spluttering, a face that looked as though it were about to fall off entirely - sat opposite me. From Newcastle to Edinburgh. Which takes hours).

Not content with providing a choice of colours for its seats (seats which apparently recline - I've failed so far to achieve this, despite some ardent button-pressing), first class also rewards you with antimacassars (sp? I've never had one before) embroidered with 'first class' so that you have a constant reminder that you're Better Than the Other Passengers. And you have a clean, cotton surface on which to rest your upper class noggin.

The tables are furnished with proper china mugs and actual metal spoons. Crikey! It's like the Ritz on here. This is so that you can be offered free tea and coffee approximately 30 times between Edinburgh and Kings Cross, from a trolley. You are also offered complementary biscuits or fruit cake (there is a man two seats up from me who had two pieces of fruit cake by the time we'd made it to Darlington). Passing up free cake takes reserves of self-control only usually attained by Shaolin monks. However, I'd already got myself a large coffee and a muffin from Caffe Nero before I'd embarked. Because a/ the fundamental rule of train travel is that, no matter what time you're getting on the train, you have to get a cup of coffee and a muffin and b/ even though you're in first class, and the coffee is not of the granules-with-hot-water-shoved-on-it variety, it is still resolutely revolting. I don't know what they do to it, but it is like coffee as imagined by Oliver Twist. Thin, grey and somehow managing to taste vaguely of Horlicks. Perhaps they still use the hateful UHT milk in it, instead of proper milk. As with many modern luxuries, East Coast's plentiful free coffee promises so much (free coffee! In a china mug! Delivered right to you, as you sit there, doing nothing, with all that leg room!) and delivers so little.

The other thing that's vaguely disappointing is that the Wi-Fi in first class isn't substantially better than it is in normal class. For the extra money, I demand an unwavering connection of a strength that would make Atlas jealous. But no, it still took me 20 minutes to order some toiletries from Boots online, because the connection kept crashing. This is the problem when you've paid extra for something (even when it's not even coming out of your own pocket) - you feel entitled to hunt for things to find fault with. 'The big table and the leg room and the free 'coffee' aren't enough', you say to yourself. 'I want some free wine, and some snacks, like you get on a plane. And maybe one of those horrible foil-topped meals! And maybe... some socks. And a toothbrush.' Because the money you're paying is twice what it would cost you to fly, so why shouldn't you be treated like an in-flight personage?

It's possibly a good thing that I'm never going to earn enough to afford a trip on the Orient Express - I'd probably be demanding sheets spun from Cheryl Cole's hair and a dedicated Persian cat for me to stroke between the hours of 10am and 2pm after the first six hours on board. Who knows what Elton John-style levels of excess I could notch up by the time we reached our final destination?