It sounds reasonably sensible to me. I never got why trains from the west used that old-fashioned maroon and beige colour scheme, particularly when (presumably for expediency’s sake) those trains were often used in other parts of the country. Mind you, it will be a shame in a way to lose the distinctive liveries of each franchise.

It does come just a few years after First Group decked out the old Scotrail trains in their own new colour scheme. Impressively, several trains and stations were made over overnight with the old stylised map of Scotland (I presume that is what it was supposed to be) being replaced with First logos left, right and centre.

(Incidentally, the First livery is a vast improvement on the old National Express Scotrail livery. Whoever decided that deep purple goes with peely-wally shades of orange and bluey-green must have been colour blind.)

At least the paint jobs will only be done when a train was due to be painted anyway. And it’s claimed that it will save money in the long run because if and when First Group lose their franchise the livery will remain the same. Having said that, what happens when Transport Scotland decides it’s time for a visual refresh as everyone feels like from time to time? I doubt much will actually be saved.

The reason this is a news story is that George Foulkes has been complaining about the new livery. You see, it depicts a Saltire. And because the SNP are in government this is a bad thing. Apparently it’s all part of an attempt to “brainwash people into independence”

The thing is, Labour also often used national symbols and there is nothing at all wrong with that. At least, you would expect it — particularly when Scotland has such a strong national identity. National symbols are perfect tools for governments to use in their materials / brands / propaganda / what-have-you. As Anseo over at Ideas of Civilisation points out:

What about when McConnell as First Minister had the Saltire adopted as the symbol for promoting Scotland - was this part of the plot?

How about the One Scot (Many Cultures) logo inspired by the saltire, started under the last administration…since that wasn`t under the SNP administration does this not count?

George Foulkes’s argument is further diminished by the fact that Transport Scotland have pointed out that the plans for this revamp began when Labour were still in power. Whoops.

As Ideas of Civilisation points out, this ought not to be an issue. George Foulkes is just frothing at the mouth for no good reason, as seems to be happening quite regularly nowadays.

Anyway, am I the only one who thinks the new design looks nothing like the Saltire? I mean obviously I saw what the design was getting at because I was told it was based on the Saltire. But it looks to me more like two arrowheads pointing at each other.

I mean, if that’s meant to be the Cross of St. Andrew, it’s not because it doesn’t cross. I know that there is a gap between the two carriages that messes it up a bit, but if you continue the lines across they don’t meet. Also, that shade of blue does not look like the official shade of blue of the Flag of Scotland which is Pantone 300. In fact, it looks suspiciously like First Group’s purple. I guess that saves on costs.

Anyway, given that I have now unilaterally established that the train looks nothing like the Saltire, I do wonder what George Foulkes is on about. I find it odd that the sight of something that vaguely looks like the Saltire would “brainwash” him into becoming a nationalist.

George Foulkes’s tie looks vaguely like the Saltire actually… Oh dear… He’s been brainwashed by his own tie!

Hello.

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like.

Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. It is pretty important stuff. But the only mentions of it have been ghettoised in the darkest recesses of the technology sections, cordoned off in yellow and black tape with “warning: geeks only” written on it.

I don’t watch the television much these days, so I might be wrong. But I saw no mention of it on the news. I heard no mention of it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear people talking about it on the streets or in pubs.

You might think, “So what? Security update for X, Y and Z are released every day. You can’t have the news reporting it every day.” But something extra happened with that security update that was released last week: it crippled many users’ computers. Including my parents’ computer.

It is just as well I was still able to use my computer to try and find out what the problem was and how to workaround it. It turned out that ZoneAlarm threw a hissy-fit after Windows XP had updated and prevented users from accessing the internet.

In fairness, the BBC reported this on their website — but that’s not very useful if you’ve got no internet. Perhaps there are still people scratching their head about why they’ve not been able to access the internet for the past week.

The problem is twofold. One, the mainstream media seems quite averse to any technology story unless it’s to do with [say this like a caveman] “GOOGLE” or “APPLE”. Or “GOOGLE”. Simply, if you want to find out anything meaningful about technology you have to really know where to look for it.

And this brings me on to the second part of the problem. The people who don’t know where to look for information are also the most vulnerable users. There are people who, for whatever reason, can’t be motivated to take proactive measures to prevent themselves from the various security issues that inevitably arise when you use the internet.

I have a friend who bought a new computer a few weeks ago. The other day he complained to me that his new computer has already got spyware on it. The thing is that it’s not difficult to protect yourself really.

I’m not really a computer expert in the slightest, but I know the basics of how to protect myself — essentially keep all your software updated with the latest patches and don’t click any dodgy links. I don’t think it’s really a difficult concept. And — touch wood — these basics have worked for me. Since I got my own computer early last year I’ve never had anything worse than a tracking cookie on my computer (as far as I know — I just know that this is an invitation for my computer to explode under the weight of pop-ups tomorrow…).

But even simple measures like these that anyone can take are difficult to get through to some people. So many people still treat computers with awe. It is sometimes easy to forget how foreign computers are to many people.

I remember a couple of years ago when there was a really bad signalling failure on the train line into Edinburgh. Basically every train was cancelled. An old lady pointed to the automated departure monitor and asked why it said a list of trains towards the bottom of the screen were still listed as being on time.

This is what she said in protest (as though it would make her more likely to get on a train to Edinburgh): “I thought computers were wonderful things that never ever went wrong.” But even my basic knowledge of how computers work told me exactly why the trains were still listed as being ‘on time’ — because they hadn’t even departed from their start station, so hadn’t passed any sensors and weren’t technically late at all. The computer was none the wiser for obvious reasons.

This can be put down to the old issue that people in their thirties and younger have been using computers for almost all of their lives and understand what a computer is good for and what it isn’t. Youngsters who have lived with computers all their lives understand how a computer works, but for many people older than that computers just work by magic.

The thing is, that divide between young and old is not so clear cut as I used to think. I was listening to iPM yesterday and there was an interview with Clive Sinclair. He pointed out that back in the 1980s computer users really understood computers because they had to in order to get them to work. Today’s youngsters growing up with computers generally don’t understand computers at all.

So we come back to my friend who is the same age as me and has a problem with spyware. I have had a few conversations with him where I have tried to persuade him to use Firefox. For him, the internet is the internet and he doesn’t understand how one browser can be better than another. Even though I have told him about all the superior features and better security that a browser like Firefox or Opera can provide, he persists on using Internet Exploder version bum point poo.

Many people, through ignorance, don’t take the simple measures to keep themselves safe on the internet. I’ve had a look at the stats for this website to see what bad browsers visitors to this site are using.

In the past month, an amazing 20% of visitors used Internet Explorer 6. This is a web browser that was originally released seven years ago and last updated four years ago. It is notorious for its security problems. The more up-to-date Internet Explorer 7 was released almost two years ago.

You would expect Firefox users to be smarter, right? Not always. In the past month, 243 Firefox users that visited this website were using a version of the browser that is considered unsafe (which I defined as 2.0.0.14 and below). This included 19 people using 1.5.0.12, 11 using 1.0.7 and 8 using 1.5.0.3. Most amazingly, 4 visitors were using Firefox 0.9.1, a browser that has been out of date for four years. I dread to think what kind of security problems these users have been getting themselves in.

It got me wondering. If this many people are using dodgy browsers, how many people are still trying in vain to unsubscribe from spam emails? How many don’t know that even viewing an image in an email alerts a spammer that your email address is active? You could go on.

I don’t mean all this in a preachy kind of way. I completely understand why it is difficult for people to keep up to date with all the security issues that arise. I just find it really frustrating that simple awareness issues are not, well, made aware to people.

Things don’t get much more ubiquitous than the internet. It is impossible to imagine that someone growing up today will not be a regular internet user in some form or another. And there are real dangers on the internet that aren’t to do with [say this like a caveman] “PEDOPHILS” and “CYBER BULLIES”. But the media reports on made-up dangers like “KNIVES” and “YOOFS” and “KNIVES” as though we are on the verge of bladeageddon.

Yesterday I was listening to Digital Planet. They had a chap called Stefan Frei on reporting that around 60% of all internet users are using an out-of-date browser. He had a really smart way of thinking about software security. You should think of software as being perishable, just in the same way as foodstuffs. You wouldn’t eat a mouldy slice of bread, so why would you use a browser with a huge security hole in it?

It’s a really smart analogy that should be spread far and wide. It’s just frustrating that the place I heard it was on Digital Planet, which is probably listened to mainly by people who already know that they should be updating their browsers.

UFO sighting!

Was this an early sign that I was losing the plot? While I was on one of my many commutes from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh I saw something in the corner of my eye while the train was passing Edinburgh Airport. At first I thought it was a bird or something — it was quite small. Just as I focussed on the mystery object, some kind of bullet or something shot across really quickly and the object disappeared in a puff of smoke.

My first thought was that there was some kind of clay pigeon shooting competition or something going on. But it seems unlikely that this would take place on the runway at an airport. Moreover, it seemed as though the mystery object was taken out by some kind of science fiction-style laser shot.

That experience was probably an early sign that the exams were genuinely driving me mad. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I have decided that it was a weather event. A really weird weather event.

Hand dryers that actually work!

There was a nasty surprise when nature called while I was in Edinburgh Waverley train station recently. It now costs 30p to spend a penny. The current inflation worries finally had a tangible effect on me personally. Forget food and fuel prices — the cost of taking a leak jumped by 50%! And it is plain inconvenient having to use a 20p and a 10p rather than just dealing with one 20p piece as before.

Anyway, I went in to do my business and they’ve given the place a nice renovation. The highlight is undoubtedly the new hand dryers. Hand dryers are notoriously awful. They just never do the job. All that ever happens is your hands get a bit hot and your hands remain as wet as they were when tap water rather than wind was enveloping them.

These new hand dryers in Edinburgh Waverley toilets are something else though. There are posters next to them that actually say, “Hand dryers that actually work!” I just thought to myself, “yeah right — hand dryers never work.”

The new dryers are quite strange. Rather than sticking your hands under a hot air blower, you stick your hands in a little slot in the top of a box. It’s a very strange feeling. You move your hands up and down in the pocket as wind gets blown around inside. I did this for around 10 seconds as the poster advised, but I was convinced that my hands would come out still soaking wet. But to my surprise my hands were bone dry! It’s like magic.

Furthermore, the posters proclaim that these new dryers are more energy efficient than the old design. The future of hand washing is indeed very exciting! These are special hand dryers — they have their own website as well.

So the next time you’re in Edinburgh Waverley station, think about going into the toilets even if you don’t need to go. Worth every of the thirty pennies.

The end of university!

I had three exams this time round. My personal feeling is that the first one went okay — could have been better, could have been worse. The second one was not okay — I had to choose two questions but I could only really answer one of them. The second question was just bluff. We’ll see how that went, but I’m not too confident about that. My third exam — the one I had the least amount of time to study for — was one of the best exams I’ve ever had.

At least I finished on a high. That is not quite my last action as a student. I still have some books to return to the library, collect a copy of my dissertation and utilise the careers service to try and work out what on earth to do next. Anyone want to offer me a job?

I won’t pretend I enjoyed university, and I don’t think I’ll miss it. Many people say the student days are the best days of their lives. The idea that the rest of life is even worse than this is something I’m trying to avoid thinking about.

But what have they done since gaining power? ASwaS notes:

The first Act of the SNP Government was to abolish tolls in and out of Fife. The second Act has been to remove university fees. As a St Andrews graduate I feel like I am in a privileged subset of the population.

So there have been two acts, both of which I oppose. This is a bit paradoxical because I am a student living in Fife. Received wisdom has it that I’m supposed to be in favour of these policies. But only the myopic think this. People see the headlines — “free this” and “free that” — without thinking about the full consequences. The policies are unashamedly populist, but unsustainable. This makes the SNP demagogues in my book.

Both of these policies are completely counter productive to a Fife-based student. I have already covered free university education before, so I won’t bore you again. But I have been meaning to write about road tolls for a long while now. So here is why road tolls should not be scrapped.

Roads are a scarce resource. There are only so many roads that can be built with the resources we have (not least space). And it is well known that no matter how many roads you build, drivers will literally be queuing up to use them.

Roads are a particularly scarce resource if you are trying to leave Fife (and who would blame you?). Geographically isolated, Fife is a peninsula. The River Tay lies to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Firth of Forth is on the south. On the west, the Ochil Hills act as fourth barrier to entering Fife. It is almost as though the Flying Spaghetti Monster was trying to tell us something about Fife.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to travel to Edinburgh from Fife by road you don’t have many options. Basically you can cross the ageing Forth Road Bridge and deal with some horrendous traffic jams. Or you can spend even more time (and use up more petrol) going via Kincardine.

So roads out of Fife are a very scarce resource. When a resource is scarce it has to be rationed somehow. Clearly, no everyone who would like to use the Forth Road Bridge, or indeed any road, would be able to use it because there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. There needs to be some way of finding out who needs to use the road the most.

There are two ways to do it. One way is to make people spend time. This is the way most roads work, and of course the Forth Road Bridge has recently become one of those roads. The other way is to make people spend money. Evil, evil money. Yes? No.

Evan Davis has explained why queuing does a really bad job at rationing a scarce resource. When you make people queue, you are making everyone spend a lot of time. Time is the scarcest resource of them all. You can’t bring back the past, and you can’t transfer your spare time to someone else who doesn’t have enough time. Once time is spent, it’s gone forever.

If, on the other hand, you use money, it might still be costly to you as a person. But at least the money doesn’t just disappear. It has simply changed hands. The money can be re-spent again. Now, society is better off than it would have been had everyone been made to queue.

So to use the Forth Road Bridge as an example, the government could choose to whack up the price of crossing. This money could then be used to build more hospitals, or even — shock horror — a second Forth road bridge or tunnel. Or they could use it to reduce taxes.

Instead, the SNP have chosen to make not only drivers crossing the bridge, but also society as a whole, pay through the nose just so that they can say that they have removed road tolls. It’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

A couple of months back Calum Cashley was sceptical that the removal of the tolls would lead to greater congestion. His argument was that as the charge was only £1, removing it would not make crossing the bridge much cheaper in the eyes of many. But if anything, this is an argument that the charge was not high enough in the first place!

Instead, the SNP have taken it in the opposite direction. Common sense dictates that it would increase congestion. And evidence suggests that it has — by half an hour every morning. The rush hour is now a rush hour and a half.

The situation starts to look even worse when you consider the environmental impact of this situation. If road tolls were in use then think of the carbon emissions that would be cut. Instead, the SNP have removed the one toll road left, meaning that even more drivers are just standing still on the road with their engines running and emitting carbon dioxide. And the SNP are supposed to be a green party!

So road tolls make sense from an economic and environmental point of view. Does that mean we should dive head first into a full-on road charging scheme? Possibly not.

I seem to remember that when Evan Davis wrote that post, it was on the back of a debate about the possibility of people being charged to use roads by the mile (or something similar). This involves having a little box in your car that enables you to be tracked wherever you go. It might be economically efficient, but there is a serious problem with civil liberties there.

Also, it is perhaps worth pointing out that queuing is probably not always the worse option. Even though people grumble about NHS waiting lists, it seems preferable to a charge-based system where doctors could make up your illnesses in order to extract more money from you.

Nevertheless, the principle of road charging (if not the method as it currently stands) is perfectly sound. The tollbooth system on the Forth Road Bridge did not suffer from this civil liberties issue, so there was no good reason to abolish them. It was all the more farcical when the Scottish Government decided to pull them down at a cost of £2m, when they had only just been erected at a cost of £4m!

Yes, I am a liberal elite atheist trying to ban Christmas, and proud of it! Not really. Everyone else can celebrate it as much as they like as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons, and I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.

I am celebrating though. Wintervals are older than Christianity, and it isn’t difficult to see why. Winter is a terrible time of year, bereft of warmth and particularly sunlight. It is quite disturbing when you have sleeping patterns like mine and you end up sleeping through the entire day.

On this basis, I should really celebrate the Winter Solstice, like Adam Smith was a Socialist does. But seeing as everyone else celebrates on the 25^th, that’s good enough for me.

For me, this is an opportunity to enjoy yourself at a bad time of the year. One of the things I hate most about Christmas is the way people get so stressed out about it. People need to chill out a bit and enjoy the holiday instead of running around trying to buy tat which the recipient will, on average, value between a tenth and a third less than was paid for it (PDF).

I am not being smug about it because I have fallen into the trap as well. There must be some kind of sociological law that says the more you’re supposed to be on holiday, the busier you actually are. Just more lies from society. I don’t know why I don’t just exit now.

That’s why I haven’t been blogging much over the past few days, even though I have a million things to say. Story of the year. The busyness is partly as a result of my high-flying career in retail (!). But I’ve also got a mountain of university work to do as well.

In a way, I am lucky as an Edinburgh University student. Our winter exams are done and dusted by mid-December, so we don’t have them looming over us all Christmas. Having the exams that early has its own disadvantages of course, but at least Christmas is worry-free.

Not this year though. I have a 3,000 word essay to write about changes in Scotland’s population since 1945. The module is The Scottish Economy, which is very interesting, but also a damn nuisance because there is very little reading material compared to most other modules. I really will have to pull those 3,000 words out of thin air.

I’m also tearing my hair out about my dissertation. It’s due in towards the end of February. For various reasons, I never got the work done during the year that I was hoping to, so I am behind schedule big time. Well, I’ve written nine pages out of 30, but I’m sure to cover most of the material that will have to be edited down quite a lot anyway.

The upshot of all this was that I was in Edinburgh on Friday to take back some books that I haven’t needed for weeks and to do some reading for that Scottish Economy essay. I also got out some more heavy books. And lots of climbing up and down stairs was involved.

Then, sucker that I am, I went to do some Christmas shopping. Lots of walking up and down Princes Street was involved. And the stuff I bought was ridiculously heavy. I felt like a bit of a tube in the train station, as I battled with all of that stuff.

Worst of all, the combination of heavy shopping and heavy library books has left me with a plethora of strange pains in all kinds of parts of my body. I feel like a decrepit octogenarian. Next year I will probably stick to shopping in Kirkcaldy.

Incidentally, mad busy 24/7 shitlife aside, I will not be switching off the computer over the Christmas period as some people do. I don’t really see the point in that. For me, blogging is — and always should be (unless it’s a pro- or business blog) — a leisure activity. I enjoy it. So I won’t be stopping. There’ll be fewer readers around of course, but that’s their choice. (Proof, if ever it were needed, that blogging is sustained mostly by people who are skiving off work).

I am currently facing the same Christmas cards dilemma that I had last year. Only this time, instead of receiving five cards, I’ve received nine. Clearly, either nobody cares that I didn’t give them a card last year, or they have completely forgotten. Which kind of sums up the insincerity of exchanging cards.

Anyway, my mother is currently bullying me into writing nine reciprocal cards. I was going to give to charity instead, because let’s face it — giving to charity will do a lot more good. Besides, what will happen if I don’t give them a card? Will I end up in their bad books? It didn’t happen last year, so…

Well, I just flipped a coin to decide, and it turns out that I have to write out the cards. Bah.

Reading about the company’s history on Wikipedia, I find it difficult to believe that it had only been around since 1996 — a strictly post-privatisation company. It had such a grand image that seemed steeped in history.

The GNER name was in fact a clever nod to three previous companies that used to operate on the East Coast — LNER, GNR and GER. It used a very old-fashioned looking coat of arms. It continued to use the ‘Flying Scotsman’ name, and even prided itself on running along “The Route of the Flying Scotsman”. All of these elements conspired to make me think that a company that was little more than a decade old was an important tie to our past.

Not so. But nevertheless I will be sad to see the name go. Rob Fenwick will have fond memories. But, despite their romantic image, I found GNER to be pretty shoddy as a train company in my experience.

I have not used them often — only for journeys between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh. There are three choices here: First ScotRail, Virgin (now CrossCountry) and GNER. GNERs always made me the most nervous.

GNER trains were often chronically late. If I had to arrive at my destination for a certain time, I wouldn’t rely on GNER to get me there. Sure, they were susceptible to this because they made long distance journeys. But so did Virgin, and I found them much more punctual.

The trains themselves (Mark 3 coaches, in case you were wondering) were older than any others I have come across and were especially prone to breaking down. The slam-shut doors, whereby you had to lean out of the window for the privilege of getting the hell out, were like something from a pre-Health and Safety, pre-Disability Discrimination Act age — mostly because they were.

The worst delay I have ever been in was with GNER. The train broke down just past Haymarket and we had to wait for ages to get permission to go back to Edinburgh Waverley! And it was already very late. I felt sorry for all of the passengers who had to travel a longer distance on it. I just jumped off and ran for a more trustworthy First ScotRail train — as did quite a few other people.

Taking GNER’s place is National Express East Coast — or (if you like your four letter initialisms) NXEC. Of course, they will be using the same piss-poor rolling stock, so I won’t be holding my breath for an improvement on that front.

I do like that East Coast logo though. I saw a glimpse of it somewhere last week on my way back from Edinburgh (can’t remember where though) and didn’t know what it was. Its silvery glint caught my eye. I didn’t have enough time to look properly, but I liked what I saw of it.

Virgin Trains also recently lost its franchise — to Arriva-run CrossCountry. I’ll reserve judgement on CrossCountry as I haven’t used them yet. But I have to say that, unlike GNER, I always found Virgin’s service to be top notch, despite its image.

The trains themselves (Class 220 Voyagers in my neck of the woods) were excellent — comfortable and fast. But most importantly I could rely on them to get me to my destination on time.

There is a Virgin / CrossCountry train that departs Kirkcaldy at 1012 every day. This is a perfect train for me as it gets me into Edinburgh for my 1110 lectures, of which I have had many. It is the first train I can use my railcard on as well.

The Virgin one is cheaper and faster — but riskier. If it is late, I will be late. If it is on time I will be just a little bit late. But I have come to trust it. The train is very seldom late, and if it is then it is only fifteen minutes or so, rather than the hour or so you might expect a GNER train to be late. I’m quite sure this service will continue, as I have barely noticed the change of franchise.

Here are some of the neat features that I have discovered since I wrote that post.

• Colour coding: trains running on time display the expected arrival time in grey. Slightly late-running trains are in yellow, while very late-running trains are in red.
• If a train is cancelled, you certainly know about it. The background turns red, and it displays in bold writing: ‘Cancelled’. Clicking on it gives you the reason for the cancellation.
• Service disruption alerts. A little envelope with an exclamation mark appeared. I clicked on it, and it displayed the following message:
  

  Train services between Edinburgh and Dunbar, and between Edinburgh and North Berwick are being disrupted due to a derailed freight train.

This Windows Gadget certainly isn’t a half-arsed effort. The information it conveys is incredibly detailed.

Yeah, there’s that massive oversized analogue clock. And there’s that calendar that doesn’t do anything except tell you what the date is. Then there is the RSS reader that only allows you to subscribe to certain Microsoft feeds. The only really useful one that came as a default on Vista is the post-it note style thing. But apart from that, unless you really like currency converters, there was not much to get stuck into.

There isn’t even anything decent among the third-party efforts. The only good one is iTunes Accessory. Almost all of the others are banal and pointless.

This always struck me as a bit weird. After all, there seem to be a lot of good widgets available for Mac OS X. And even when you look at the wonderful and varied ways that Facebook Applications have been used, the world of Windows Sidebar Gadgets is startlingly stagnant.

But yesterday I discovered a truly useful and surprisingly well-executed Gadget made by National Rail Enquiries. Once you install the gadget, you simply type in your start station (and, optionally, your destination station) and up pops a list of how the trains are running. Essentially, it is the live departure boards feature of the National Rail website, just sitting there in the corner ready for me to glance at.

I already put it to good use yesterday, in my little game of chicken (what’s the latest train I dare to get?). I couldn’t decide which between two trains I should get. But when the earlier one started to run late, I decided I had better stay on the safe side and get the earlier one.

The gadget could do with a couple of extra features. Clicking on a journey brings up a larger screen with details on the expected journey times — but only from your station onwards (eg., I get a table of all the stations between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh Waverley). But I usually like to see how the train has been running at stations prior to Kirkcaldy to give me a better idea of the journey’s history. I always get the impression that the journey estimates are a little on the optimistic side, and I’d rather like to see the cold, hard facts of how the train has actually been getting along.

But I can’t complain too much. As I said, it is just amazing enough that such a useful gadget has finally been made, and by National Rail Enquiries of all people! I get the feeling that it is going unnoticed (apparently it’s been around since July, and I’ve only just found out about it). If you are a regular train user and have Windows Vista, you probably ought to install it.

Ever since I started at university I have noticed a pattern. The first Christmas after starting university felt amazing. I couldn’t work out why, but I just went along with it. After all, you oughtn’t worry about feeling good. Then, between Christmas and New Year it hit me again: I realised that I would have to go back to university in a couple of weeks.

Since then, every university holiday has felt the same. It’s not just having time off. Like I said, I am just as busy when I am away from university, just doing different stuff. But just not having to be there is such a weight off my mind. I must really hate university.

At this time of year a lot of people ask me if I’m looking forward to going back to university. The answer, “Actually, I’m dreading it,” is mostly met with confusion. It’s a bit like the “how are you” conversations. You’re not actually allowed to say what you actually feel about university. Student life is meant to be amazing — the best years of your life. I have spent them depressively gazing at my feet.

Student life is way overrated if you ask me. Maybe part of it is down to the fact that I still live at home, so I don’t get to sample much in the way of student life. I don’t get the fun bits. I just get the work. Plus three hours of commuting hell every single day. I don’t get to do all the cool things students do, whatever they are.

But even if I lived in Edinburgh I doubt I would be into it much. Student culture is probably one of the biggest stains on humanity. When it doesn’t involve getting horrendously drunk for the most tenuous of reasons, it seems to be about “ironically” watching Neighbours, “ironically” saying “retrooo” at anything that is vaguely more old-fashioned than an iPod Touch and “ironically” being a total and utter twat.

Plus, for a section of society that is meant to be well-educated and open minded, students are an incredibly reactionary bunch. You meet extremists of all sorts — right- as well as left-wing. I find myself wandering around going, “Where are all the reasonable people?” I can’t remember the last time I heard a student say, “On the one hand… On the other hand.” [Insert obligatory dig at excessive bansturbators People & Planet here.]

All-in-all, it is enough to make me want to “ironically” reach for the nearest gun and “ironically” shoot myself so that I could go to “ironic” hell, because that might be a little bit more pleasant than a university campus.

This year, the dread came a bit earlier than previous years. It came over me like a massive black cloud on a visit to Edinburgh a month or so back. I used to quite like Edinburgh, but now it just reminds me of university dread. On top of all of the usual stuff, I have to contend with a couple of factors that are making me more scared of this year than usual.

First there is the dissertation. Because of my unexpectedly busy summer, I have not done as much preparation over the summer as I would have liked. The deadline is March, but still. I have not come much further forward since April. And next week I have to meet my Director of Studies who is the same person as my Dissertation Supervisor. Meep.

Then there is the fact that I have still not worked out what the hell I am going to do once I have finished university. Given that this is my final year, I had better think of something quickly.

The thing about careers is, you really need to have a good idea of what you want to do from a young age. If you haven’t worked it out by the time you’re about 15, I reckon you are screwed (like me). I used to say to people, “It’s a bit worrying, I don’t know what I’m going to do once I leave education.” Invariably people said, “It doesn’t matter. Nobody really knows what they want to do. You still have plenty of time to think of something.”

This is bullcrap. I found this out the hard way by actually believing it. The thing is, the advice stays like that until you reach the age of about 20. At which point the general advice becomes, “Well you should have decided before then, shouldn’t you!” True, but unhelpful. And then you are stuck with it, all set for a life spent wandering around like a headless chicken.

So given that I have to think up a profession quick-smart, I am going to have to attend every Careers Service event under the sun this year. To have this on top of the dissertation, I have a feeling it’s going to be a pretty tough year.

For some reason that I can’t really fathom, the train was absolutely mobbed today. The station was busy enough — on both platforms. When I got on the train it was already standing room only, before any passengers from Kirkcaldy boarded. It was not as if it was a particularly nice morning or anything. Yet the train was heaving with tourists.

Anyway, the poor train guard had a mountain to climb just to get tickets out to everyone. He had to barge his way past the dozen or so people standing in the “vestibule area”. Once he emerged he was confronted with a large group of people from Cupar who had only gone and bought the wrong tickets. Their tickets were for Dundee, not Edinburgh.

Most guards obviously can’t be arsed with their job. My guess is that some might have pretended not to notice that the tickets were for the wrong destination. After all, this was a group of daytrippers who were, to be fair, of advanced age. Having to shell out for new tickets would put a considerable dampener on their day and, dare I say, edged them a couple of hours closer to death. Other guards might just lose their patience over the matter.

But this guard knew what was what. The passengers seemed pretty upset when they realised what had happened, but the conductor kept the whole situation under control. Most would have mumbled and grunted. Some others might have rolled their eyes and tutted. This one? “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s all under control. Keep your tickets. You can get a refund at the station.”

Of course, this is just him doing his job. But the unusually high number of passengers made the journey feel a bit chaotic as it was already, and there must have been several passengers on the train who did not yet have a ticket for those all important barriers in Edinburgh. And by the time the whole tangle was sorted out, we were almost halfway to Edinburgh already. I’m not sure how calm I would have stayed.

In time to reach the Forth Bridge, he made an announcement on the loudspeaker system. This is another point where you can usually tell whether the guard’s heart is in it. Sometimes they start with a heavy sigh, making you wonder if the guard is accidentally broadcasting to the entire train when he actually meant to dial 0898 50 50 50. Then they might grumpily plod through the script, as if to signify, “Look here, I really can’t be arsed, so don’t give me shit today, okay?”

Incidentally, I am certain that some members of staff have a bet on to see who can say “Cupar, Leuchars” the quickest. So the next time you’re on the East Coast Main Line around Fife, listen out for the announcement. “Edinburgh *sigh* Waverley… Haaymarket… err, Inverkeithing, gah, Kirkcaldy… Markinch… *cough* Ladybank… Cuparleuchars… Dundee…”

I am also sometimes amused (and this is where I reveal my snobby side) at the way guards try to speak formally and politely but are just incapable of doing so. Many long words are inventerised, causating me to arise my head from my book in amusementation.

There was none of that sort of thing from today’s masterful guard. He was a fine speaker with an authoritative yet friendly voice. In fact, with his distinctive, formal Scottish accent I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with late night radio hero Rhod Sharp.

Yet again, the guard was the calm amid the storm. “Those of you who still do not have tickets, I will endeavour to see you before we arrive at Haymarket and Edinburgh Waverley.” Not only this, but he seemed to be getting into the spirit of the day for many passengers, who were mostly tourists, as I have already noted. Acting as part tour guide, he appended his announcement: “To the group that joined us at Leuchars, you will see the painters hanging off the side of the bridge; I was not jesting about that.”

It was that last comment that made me think, “Wow.” In a hectic situation he managed to find the time to make a frivolous but heart warming comment for the benefit of the daytrippers, and provide on update on it over the loudspeaker system.

I quickly realised that it was silly to be so impressed, because he was only doing his job. But so many people don’t do that. Most guards grumpily check your tickets then sod off to their cabin for the remainder of the journey.

By contrast, here was a person who knew what he was doing. He kept control of a busy train with some upset passengers and still found the time to have a bit of fun with the passengers as well. I found myself appreciative of the fact that the guard put in so much effort and that, horror of horrors, he looked as if he might even enjoy his job — one that most would find unfulfilling.

I think now I understand why lollipop men are sometimes on the honours list.