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    I’m going with the classical education. The traditional route to the top. Born to rule, eh? Effortlessly schooled in the ways of casual superiority.
    Anyway, no shame in that either way. We play the hands we’re given, right? You am what you am! You need no excuses. You deal your own deck: sometimes the aces, sometimes the deuces. Dead right!
    Where was I? Oh yes. Pyrrhic victories. Let me explain, just in case you skipped class that day.
    A long time ago, in a country far, far away, there was a king called Pyrrhus. As Ancient Greek kings go, he was pretty tasty. Gave the emergent Roman Empire a bit of a spanking on more than one occasion. He took no lip off nobody. He was a born winner.
    But there was a flaw. Old Pyrrhus, he was a bit over-keen. The way he saw it, winning was all that mattered. Victory had to be pursued – no matter what the cost. Until, after one particularly bloody encounter at a place called Heraclea, his defeat of the Romans was so absolute that it ended up costing him his whole army too. He won the battle, but he also kind of lost. And a certain Mr Plutarch, who was a leading tabloid scribe of the day, coined the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’ to describe that peculiar kind of victory that comes at a prohibitive cost to the victor.
    Interesting, eh? But also, eye-opening. A Pyrrhic victory. Are my letters Pyrrhic victories? It gives me pause. Oooh, and it makes me wonder, as Robert Plant put it. Am I the real loser here? Twicefold? Firstly for giving you so much money for such pitiful service every day, and secondly for wasting my own time in order to waste your time writing about it?
    Possibly. I’d welcome your thoughts.
    But on the other hand… to hell with it. I’m with Pyrrhus.
    Until next time,
    Au revoir !
    Dan
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Re: 22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, June 22.
    Dear Dan
    Thank you for your email. I feel it’s the least I can do to personally offer an apology when your journey home has been delayed.
    I fully understand your irritation with your most recent delay. I suspect, however, that you did not realise that the delay was due to a particularly nasty fatality at Hayes and Harlington. It did take some time to reopen the line, partly due to the actions needed after any death on the railway, but also due to the driver having to be relieved from duty due to the trauma.
    I am sure there are always things we could do better, and I expect that this was true last night. However, there are times when the circumstances are genuinely outside our control. Clearly last night’s incident was not something you could be aware of, nor indeed would our customers have realised quite how difficult the situation was at Hayes.
    Although we work closely with British Transport Police and Network Rail to prevent suicides, sadly we are not always successful. Line closures at peak time will lead to long delays due to congestion. We took a number of measures to reduce these, but there was a lengthy period where all trains were stopped and this inevitably caused problems for our customers. Delays then knocked on to later services such as yours.
    I am sorry for the inconvenience this caused.
    Martin
‌ Letter 9
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, June 23. Amount of my day wasted: 18 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Lego Head, Competitive Tech Nerds, Train Girl.
    Martin: we’ve become penpals! We’re totally e-buddies. I’m developing a more regular dialogue with you than I have with my own wife. I feel we’re getting… intimate.
    Guess what? My train this morning, as I scoured the papers for the latest on the worsening situation in North Africa, as I digested the details of the marches and rallies, as I read with increasing scepticism the assertions and proclamations of the men in charge