A RECENT bout of labyrinthitis has meant that I have had to use both trains and buses to get about.

I knew, from friends, how many delays and cancellations there were on the rail network and so braced myself for long and frustrating journeys, but I really had no idea just how bad it was.

Firstly, I have to say that I have nothing but admiration for the station and train staff who seem as frustrated as we passengers, after all they have to get to and from work on the same trains we travel on and have to put up with our irritation.

Having said that, those who make the decisions to have a train whizz through platforms just because it is running a few minutes late deserve our ire.

I understand that a complex series of decisions is made, and a lot of those decisions are to do with Hyndland being an extremely busy junction point, but when a train is at Dumbarton Central and is running a few minutes late, then for the sake of stopping at Dalreoch, Craigendoran and Cardross, surely it can hardly make much difference to the turnaround at Helensburgh?

For days now I feel that our protests and the best efforts of our local MP are not enough.

When the trains are cancelled I have to get the bus, which I quite enjoy as the countryside looks beautiful at this time of year, but it comes with its own disadvantages – they don’t always run on time, and for someone with labyrinthitis, they are a bit shoogly, causing major vertigo on alighting, but worst of all is the horde of schoolkids.

So it means sitting next to an old dear (me) or several other older folk, but we don’t bite and of course not sitting next to your mate for all of the short journey from the academy to town is unthinkable. But people need to get off the bus, and to have to push through gangly teenage lads is difficult with a wee voice and a big shopping trolley.

I don’t think they are rude, just oblivious to anything outside their world.

Is this an evolutionary development of the teenager, I wonder: the ability to screen out extraneous distraction, a crucial skill in computer gaming?