It's nice of Virgin to provide a sign welcoming us to Coventry. It's just a shame they sent us to Coventry in the first place.

Here we all are, at 11pm on a Wednesday night, stood helpless on the platform with our broken-down train licking its wounds opposite.

Earlier in the evening I was mildly uptight when I accused Virgin of being "idiots" and intimated I would be demanding my money back.

Now I'm finding it all amusing, in its own numbingly inevitable way. My current estimated time of arrival into Reading is 12:30am, three hours late and eight hours after the train's scheduled departure time from Newcastle.

In that time the sheer number of trains - hypothetical and physical - involved in the operation has been staggering.

One train left Edinburgh bound for Southampton earlier this afternoon, and that's the one I got on at Newcastle.

A separate train left Manchester bound for Southampton slightly later on and, at Birmingham New Street, these two trains merged. Confusingly, the Edinburgh train on which I was sat became the Manchester to Southampton service.

Between Birmingham International and Coventry that train broke down. This was hardly unexpected - it was an hour late leaving Edinburgh because it wouldn't work properly, but Virgin seem to have taken a chance on a faulty train making it all the way to Southampton.

After twenty minutes dormant in a field it managed to limp to Coventry. Forty minutes or so later a replacement train arrived, and that's where I find myself. Add a taxi back to my car and the drive home, and I'll be lucky to get back before 1:30am. I mean it, this is it. No more Virgin for me. The Dodge can take me everywhere... its record is so much better...

Post title in honour of Andrew, the train manager for this service since New Street, who - while we were stopped in the middle of a field - used the word to describe the journey thus far.