I bloody hate the train journey back home from our family Christmas.

Every year it's always the bloody same. Bloody useless.

First train to arrive late at Banbury station, heading to Manchester, was packed to the gills. I had a seat booked on the next one so I hung on. It was late, but only by 10 minutes, so no great catastrophe - so far.

I find my seat. No-one's sitting in it. It's all good. So far.

The train manager informs us the train is going to terminate at Stockport but we'll be bussed to Piccadilly. Ok, bit of a pain but not the end of the world. Won't take much longer.

Then we get to Birmingham. After 15 minutes of twiddling our thumbs at New Street the 'train manager' informs us our driver is late. It's 2.45pm. he tells us that if we want to get on the next Manchester train it's due in at 2.48pm on platform 7b. Having decided gathering sundry bags and rushing off to find a train that's leaving in three minutes is madness I sit tight. At 3.10pm our driver shows up and we're off.

Promises of going a bit faster to make up the time from our train manager prove empty. We amble through Stoke and as we approach Macclesfield we're informed the train will terminate there. But we can catch another train to Manchester Victoria. By this point I am crunching extra strong mints and glowering. Steam can be seen escaping from my ears, though that could be the mints.

So at Macc it's all off. I help an old woman with her suitcase, even though she's rammed it into my ankles twice trying to edge her way closer to the door. We all trundle up and down flights of stairs, all sit about in the cold (I'm still trying to quell hunger pangs with half a tube of extra strongs) and we all ram our way onto one of the slowest trains since Stevenson's rocket. We all get off at Manchester Victoria - an hour and a half late.

This isn't actually anywhere near my record worst train journey. It once took me ten hours to get from Leeds to Edinburgh, but then there had been a rail crash that day and someone had thrown themselves on the track near Birmingham.

But this was only Christmas. We have it every year. Why does it throw the trains into chaos every year? Why?!?!?!?