Beastly Britain

"The British are good in a crisis." That's what we all believe. So we can afford to raise our eyes to heaven at the cack-handed and panicky way that the Americans responded to that small bomb in Atlanta last month. We know that they've not been tested as we have. The Luftwaffe and the IRA have not set fire to their cities; they haven't watched their docks and cathedrals burning.

But when my wife finally returned home on Thursday night, delayed by the Watford train crash, she had a very different tale to tell. She, a colleague, a very heavy box and 300 other pasengers were travelling from Liverpool to Euston, and must have been close to Nuneaton when, some 50 miles to the south, the 17.04 smashed into an empty train returning to its depot.

Soon her train was either going at a snail's pace, or was stuck stationary in the middle of a turnip field. The guard could not tell passengers what was going on, because the train's tannoy was broken - but it wasn't long before mobile phones and radios began giving the first news of the crash. There was an instant rush for the buffet car as word spread along the train that the delay could be bad.

Eventually, they pulled into a large station 40 minutes' drive north of London and stopped. Again, there was no announcement, so someone got off, then someone else did, then they all did. After a brief mill, an employee of the railways was discovered; the cackle of his walkie-talkie had given him away. He didn't know anything, he said. Nobody knew anything. Since the splitting up of the railways, it had become impossible for people to know things. Perhaps there would be buses, perhaps not.

With the station obviously closed for business, the mass of business travellers, families and tourists made their way to the station car-park, past a small and static gaggle of male rail employees who were standing around, speaking into their walkie-talkies and looking as urgent and harassed as any group of completely unemployed men ever could. Was it possible, asked my 5ft 1in partner, for someone to help them with the box? One snorted, another cast his eyes up to heaven. Didn't she know that there was a crash on? "We're bringing bodies off the line," said one, whose own body hadn't shifted in 30 minutes.

By now, the car-park was full of people, some (especially those with children) frantic, some (like the football team) pissed. One of the railmen lumbered over. "There'll be buses on the other side of the station," he yelled. "When?" He didn't know. "How many?" Didn't know that, either. And off he went again, leaving the masses, like the children of Israel, to march off out of bondage under their own steam.

After about an hour, the first bus arrived. Not a capacious double-decker, nor even a coach, but a hoppa - one of those things that takes two small pensioners and a shopping buggy and has a range of about half a mile. By now, an off-duty female rail employee, tiring of the offensive incompetence of her male colleagues, was actively organising tired passengers into queues for the non-existent buses. Everyone did as they were told.

Those few with a bit more of their own or their employer's money to burn kept on the look-out for taxis. One drew up beside the large box and asked my wife where she wanted to go. As she replied, a female voice from behind squealed, "Whatever she's paying, I'll pay more!" A Barbour-clad twentysomething, who had obviously not heard of the Blitz, was now entering an auction for the cab, which suited the driver, who was happy to entertain bids. Faced with the forces of evil, my wife gave up.

What would she now say characterises the British in a time of crisis? For the most part, it's docility, ignorance, apathy, selfishness, self- righteousness and buck-passing. Depressing, eh?