Slow and Dirty
The Somerset and Dorset Light Railway
was known as the ‘Slow and Dirty’
Today, in 1956, third class rail travel was abolished by British Railways. This was a catastrophe, not arguably because with the demise of the third class ticket Her Majesty’s third class subjects could no longer travel by train, thus giving Dr. Beeching an excuse to close lots of stations [including the ancient Roman one at Blandford Forum], but rather because it removed the pointedness of Stephen Potter’s advice on ‘Lifemanship
It was in this book that he advised us that when being met on the platform always to emerge from a third class carriage prominently displaying a first class ticket. In this way it was possible to show the world that you were a ‘Man of the People
Today here in Turkey there are few men of the people, only third class citizens either by virtue of their lack of wealth, or due to a surfeit of vanity. If people could travel the length and breadth of the Country by rail, as was possible in England before Beeching, no one would consider travelling third class on a first class ticket. My mother-in-law, [MIL], for example, refuses to eat in most of the restaurants Amazon, Irem and I frequent, not on any hygienic ground but because they’re so unfashionable. Our friend Abbas hasn’t travelled by public transport for over 20 years.
People living in Amos race by automobile through the night to reach Istanbul in time for work the next day after spending a weeks break here. They could be transported in more comfort on a coach. To do so would be however, in their eyes, appear to be genuinely third class, an unforgivable sin in the Narcisssistic classes to whom I refer. Potter is undoubtedly correct and third class public transport is clearly the only way to travel for anyone who is anyone worth wishing to be known, or worth knowing.
Kindly note: In fairness to MIL I must state for the record, that whatever her shortcomings, her preferred method of transport between cities is the humble motor coach.
