It's a horrific fantasy, but I had to share it with you...

Sometimes my connection train is late, and I have to wait 25 minutes on Platform 9.  There are lots of people waiting and few plaves to sit.

"Here is a Special Announcement".  Ears twitch. A train has been cancelled?  Fares have doubled overnight?  Seasoned rail-travellers know what's coming next.  "Please make sure your belongings are attended at all times."  She sounds like an anally retentive primary school teacher speaking to the dunces in the back row. "Any unattended articles may be removed by the police..."

Today the message was repeated in French and German.  And many times in Britlish.

Now, there may the odd idiot on the platform who thinks it would do no harm to abandon their belongings and expect it still be there, unexploded, a few hours later.

But most of us do know about security scares and have no desire to cause them.  We all want to hang on to our belongings.  It's just that in the apathy induced waiting for our train and hearing endlessly repeated annoucement in an unreal, condescending voice one of two of us may get a little absent-minded.

How much better, I thought, if every security announcement was different.  More or less the same words, but a different voice.

Ricky Gervaise, Amy Winehouse, Cheri Booth, Boris Johnson...

Now, I would go apeshit if I heard Prince Charles say, or the Vicar of Dibley or Sting or David Beckham telling me not to abandon my luggage on Platform 9 of Clapham Junction station.  But at least I would listen.  The message would sink home.  And there would be no danger I'd dose off and miss another connection.  All of us would be on the next train out.