After last week's experience, am not convinced by current TV ads, telling us that everything is back to normal - at least not the normal they are trying to convince us is normal.

That normal is one where an amazingly empty train glides effortlessly through green fields, past lakes and mountains, while a dreamy looking woman, with four seats all to herself, stares dreamily out of the window, until she is delivered on time to a clean and shiny anonymous terminus.

If you suddenly found your daily journey to work was like that, it would be far from normal.

It would be exceptional, out of the ordinary and totally abnormal.

Real, genuine, back-to-normal would mean overcrowded, filthy trains, stopping and starting so they always arrive at least ten minutes late, with one or more really long delay of about an hour per week, plus fed-up commuters trying to turn pages of papers without knocking over people standing in aisles and endlessly checking watches to see how late they will be.

Which is what I told the TV crew, filming a piece for local news about whether the rail services were actually back to normal.

So impressed were they by my rant that they asked if they could film me sitting on train staring out of the window, in a dreamy fashion, on the outskirts of East Croydon, where the train we were on had been stationary for several minutes for no apparent reason.

"We're trying to recreate the look of the TV advertisement," said the cameraman.

"To highlight the contrast between the way they show it and the way it is."

Flattered that they thought I was suitably dreamy-looking to look, in a soft focused sort of way, out of the window, I agreed.

And they spent several minutes filming me looking enigmatically at people's back gardens and rubbish piling up in the streets, rather than green fields and crystal-clear lakes.

And to complete the sequence, when we finally got going again and reached London, they filmed me looking serene amid crowds of people all crushed together in attempts to get through automatic ticket barriers - rather than striding leisurely down platform, while attracting the glances of the handful of other people also at the shiny anonymous terminus.

I was told the mini film would be shown on the news that evening and rushed home (at least as much as you can rush when you're in the hands of a back-to-normal rail company) to catch it.

I shouldn't have bothered.

Either through misunderstanding or deliberate advantage-taking on behalf of film crew, I was not shown in quite the dreamy light I had anticipated.

I was totally contrasted with the real TV ad and somehow attractive woman staring dreamily out of window had metamorphosed into self, looking rough, under harsh neon lighting of carriage, with face alternately frowning or just looking downright bored and listless.

To make matters worse, I wasn't the only one who had gone home early to see it.

"Saw you on the local news last night," said Virginia, the lovely long-legged commuter, who has recently started making the daily journey to London.

"You didn't look very happy. Did they force you into appearing or were they secretly filming without your permission?"