‘Get permission from the ticket office
to travel on this train’
sums up this queue-fat England
of intransigence and new rules
Here staff cannot show emotions
or make their own on-the-hoof decisions
The green biro’d ticket was waved on
an hour later by a shrugging millennial
Class resides on trains and in politics
those two parallel English antiquities
which feed off each other
and equally upset the low users of both
The woman serving in the galley
of processed food did so with a smile
That was my only uplifting Virgin moment
.
