Dominic Utton finds ways to cope with the hassles of travel

First things first. Happy new year! Hope you’re enjoying those ticket-fare price rises. Hope you’re appreciating those over-running engineering works slowing down your journeys.

Isn’t it wonderful how the New Year brings with it a renewed sense of optimism? Because it does, doesn’t it? Every January we tell ourselves: things are going to be different. From now on everything’s going to get better. This time next year we’ll be millionaires, Rodney. And there’s no reason that I can think of why the same shouldn’t be true of our commuting lives.

We all make resolutions in January, we all set ourselves targets through which to improve our lives over the coming year — and so, without further ado, here are my commuting resolutions (plus one for the good people at First Great Western to take away and use too). Get more done on the commute. An hour to London each morning, an hour back each evening — plus all the extra time inevitably tacked on in delays — adds up to a lot of potential productivity.

In 2014 this time could be better spent than staring out of a window, or playing online scrabble on the phone, or even revisiting the seminal early work of Echo & The Bunnymen on the iPod. Details of exactly what and how to be sketched in later, but for now the important thing is to resolve to do something. Stop taking it all so personally Delays happen. We know this. Many delays, happening often. Prices rise — by at least the rate of inflation, every January for the last 11 years. Seats are hard to come by, and on some services, comfortable standing places are hard to come by too. All of this is bad, obviously – but, unlikely as it may seem, none of it is the result of a personal vendetta by the big cheeses at the train company. It’s just extraordinarily frequent bad luck. Be nicer to each other Our fellow passengers are not the enemy. This should be remembered most of all.

Instead of fighting each other for the prime spots on the platform, the few remaining seats, the last bottle of train wine on the trolley, we should show a little solidarity. We’re all in it together, as someone once said. We share a common pain — and it should be a comfort to the miserable to have companions in our misery. And for those who run our rail networks… the resolution is simple.

This year, let’s take a shot at the grand prize. Let’s aim for the stars. Let’s try for a week — a whole week, any time this year — without delays. What are the odds we can all manage that this year, do you think? About the same as our resolutions to hit the gym, or cut down on the booze? Thought so. Normal service resumed by February then. PS — I will be talking about my battles with First Great Western and how I’ve put those experiences into my novel, Martin Harbottle’s Appreciation of Time, at Blackwell’s bookshop in Broad Street next Thursday, January 16. Tickets available in the shop — hope to see you there.