Showing posts with label Princess Alice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Princess Alice. Show all posts

Monday 19 March 2012

The days when everyone had their own train

Travelling is an expensive, stressful business these days. Fuel costs are sky high, train fares prohibitively expensive and I was stunned when I drove to Manchester recently to find that using the M6 toll costs £5.50 each way. That seems an awful lot for just 27 miles of road…

The news didn’t get any better this morning when I opened The Times to discover that David Cameron wants to kickstart the economy by allowing private companies to build, operate and maintain motorways and trunk roads. Hard-pressed motorists apparently won’t have to pay to use existing roads but firms could charge for new routes or new pay-as-you go lanes.

As I read all this doom and gloom I wondered what Princess Alice, the Queen’s late aunt, would have made of it all. Over the weekend I was sorting out my embarrassingly cluttered office and discovered the transcript of a speech my mum once made.  She’d interviewed Princess Alice at her Kensington Palace home and they talked a lot about her childhood.

“As the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch Princess Alice spent a childhood travelling from one ancestral home to another,” wrote my mum. “Whenever a journey was imminent, the children, servants, horses and luggage would be loaded on to the family train. ‘How extraordinary, Ma’am,’ I said, ‘to have your own train.’ ‘Oh, in those days,’ she said, ‘everybody did.’”

PS. I spotted this leopard-print Beetle in east London recently and still can’t decide whether it’s super-hideous or super-chic!
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