"To whom it may concern . . ." tapped Graham. "I am writing to offer my condolences over the failure for your latest work of fiction to be considered for the Booker Prize.

I have read and re-read your book and marvel at its creativity and inventiveness. It must have required a truly powerful imagination to fill each and every page with fantasises which bear absolutely no resemblance to reality. I congratulate you and urge all judges of fiction prizes to include your work in future short lists . . ."

"Are you writing to Beryl Bainbridge?" I asked Graham, who seems to have a bit of letter writing thing going on at the moment. He has spent most of the past year exchanging correspondence with Connex over the state of the rail service and bizarre offers of compensation - such as the free vouchers to be spent in a pub for a train that was nearly three hours late - which, as Graham pointed out, would be nice if only the trains ever got you home in time to go to the pub.

Last week, I caught him writing back to them re; offers of pub vouchers, and explaining that he never got home in time to go out drinking, so could he instead have a Magnum of champagne with which to celebrate imminent arrival of wife's baby.

It still hasn't arrived though (the baby that is - not the champagne - though that hasn't arrived either and maybe never will).

"No, this one is for Connex," muttered Graham, still intent at work on his laptop as the train neared Gatwick, about half an hour after it should have neared Gatwick. "Might send copies to Thameslink as well, for what it's worth."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "So what's the work of fiction you're referring to."

"The timetable, of course," replied Graham. "Never read anything so fictitious in my life."

To prove the point, he got the timetable out of his bag (and not just the free flimsy few pager timetable that tells you the times of the trains on a particular route but the big fat have to pay for it tells you all the trains in the world timetable).

"It ought to have one of those disclaimers at the beginning," he said. "You know the thing that people write when they've obviously based their novel entirely on a good friends life, but don't want to be sued for libel so they claim they haven't."

"The characters in this novel are entirely fictional and any resemblance to real characters or events are entirely accidental, you mean?" I replied.

"That's the one," said Graham. "Only in this case it ought to read; 'The times of the trains in this book are based entirely on fantasy and any arrival or departure of trains as times depicted in this book is entirely accidental."

He continued with his letter, the train continued on its slow and tortuous path towards London (now nearly 45 minutes late) and I continued with my book, a genuine Booker prize shortlister, Ian McEwan's Atonement, which may or may not win the prize but is a good deal more entertaining than the train timetable (the sooner this baby is born and Graham becomes too tired to obsessively bombard customer relations with his insane written rants the better).

As we neared Victoria, the conductor passed though the carriage and asked to see our tickets.

Graham showed his and asked the reason for the delay this morning.

"Body on the line," replied the conductor. "Selfish so and sos...." he added, obviously thinking this would give some credibility to the excuse.

"May I suggest," Graham was tapping away again. "That when your next work of fiction is published, you include a glossary of terms which would help your readers better understand your work.

"It would be useful for example to be told that 'Body on the Line' is a popular euphemism for 'It's Monday morning, the drivers had a bit of a lie in and so did the signalmen. Yours sincerely, etc etc ...'