It's been a bad, hellish week on Britain's railways.

After last week's episode, with the rain and the dark and the dog, and getting stranded and having to walk down the track, in the rain and the dark with the dog, in order to get back to Brighton, four and a half hours after leaving Victoria, I was feeling optimistic in an "it can't get any worse..." sort of way. How wrong I was.

Average journey time seems to be about an hour and half. Average time waiting is also about an hour and half, making average travelling time about three hours one way and six for a return. Which, taking account of extended coffee, lunch, shopping breaks, is more hours spent travelling than working. Average temper is frayed and average frustrations are taken out on Connex platform staff.

To my list of jobs I would not wish to do in a million years (even if the pay is huge and includes a house in Primrose Hill and ten weeks annual holiday), I have added Connex platform officer (which may not be the correct title but is the best description I can think of for the people who stand about on the platforms, wearing blue and yellow and waiting for the abuse to start).

'Til recently, the list was pretty much: sewer cleaner, chiropodist, dentist, pathologist - having a bit of an aversion to body parts and anything to do with them. This week, after watching a programme about stress which followed a group of people working for a council information service in Leeds, I decided I never want to work for council information service in Leeds. The poor workers in question had to deal, day in day out, with frenzied queues of irate general public which led to them having stress levels equivalent to psychiatric patients - in fact their jobs were not dissimilar to those of Connex platform officers.

Last week Connex staff were to be found, milling around, being as helpful as is possible when there are no trains and you don't have a clue when the next train is going to arrive and even if it does there are no drivers and even if there were they'd have to drive at a snail's pace. But, this week they've barricaded themselves behind a reinforced plasterboard wall, masquerading as an information post and are busy deflecting inquiries with a flimsy piece of paper which mentions about three possible times you might be able to travel on, which I suppose might be one of the much talked about "emergency timetables".

Given my editor, who usually fails to notice any event which happens outside a three mile radius of Soho, has acknowledged my excuses about trains and being late for work may be genuine. "Haven't you got any friends?" she asked, when I arrived two hours late last Wednesday. Which seemed irrelevant, until she added "that you can stay with until things get better."

"Actually, I have," I replied, " but most of them are fully booked until Christmas." To which she responded with the previously unthinkable: "Perhaps you'd better work from home next week. We need that piece you're doing for the Christmas issue by Wednesday at the latest. Why not stay home on Monday and see how it goes?"

Which was fantastic. I woke up yesterday to the news that there were no trains going anywhere much and remembered that I didn't even have to bother trying to find one that was. On top of which I had an amazingly productive day; cleaned the house, did the washing, emailed several friends, chatted to colleagues on phone and got about as much work done as if I'd spent six hours trying to get there.....