"It could be worse. You could be walking down the middle of a railway track in the pitch black and pouring rain."

I was speaking to friend Mark, as we walked down the middle of the railway track, in the pitch dark and pouring rain.

"With a dog in your arm," replied Mark, who happened to be carrying a dog in his arms - Dido.

Dido is Mark's sister's dog. He is dog sitting for a week while she (Mark's sister) holidays in Italy and this was her (Dido's, not Mark's sister's) first experience of commuting.

This was last Friday and Mark, Dido and myself met up on the concourse at Victoria where having missed the 18.06 Brighton train (I got a bit tied up at work and Mark was going through the details of Dido's daily routine), we decided to get the 18.32 to Hove, change at Haywards Heath and pick up something to Brighton there.

The train was crawling a bit but there were no middle of nowhere stoppages and Dido behaved immaculetly, curling up at Mark's feet, but moving aside whenever anyone tried to pass and entertaining the occasional crumb which fell from the sandwich of the man sitting opposite.

When we got to Haywards Heath, we didn't have to wait long for the Brighton train to arrive and again Dido curled up contentedly and didn't bat an eye when the electronic doors did a bit of schizophrenic opening and closing routine, before finally closing and allowing the train to depart.

So far so good. It was about eight o'clock - so, we were running a little bit late but not much and Dido had never been to Haywards Heath before so it was a bit of an experience for her.

BUT (and it was a big but), then, we stopped a few hundred yards or so outside Preston Park station and the lights went off - according to the guard, because another train between us and Brighton had broken down so they'd had to turn the power off because we were tantalising close to Brighton, people started getting a bit fidgety but Dido was a model of calmness throughout the next hour, during which we sat in the semi-lit carriage - lit by the dim emergency lights they put on when the power is out.

BUT (and really this should be an even bigger but) then, whatever power powers the emergency lights ran out and we were left in total darkness.

Having a very level headed dog, Dido decided to go to sleep and wait for further announcements. These were infrequent and mostly along the lines of: "Sorry for the unavoidable delay... mumble, mumble, mumble."

And then, there was the rather inspirational: "Must ask passengers not to leave the train."

"How can we leave the train?" asked someone, I've no idea who, since we couldn't see anyone. "The doors won't open without power and there's no bloody power."

And then someone, I've no idea who, for same reasons as above, had the brilliant idea to smash the glass things that give you access to emergency door handles and there was a sort of spontaneous uprising during which emergency door handles up and down the train were opened and throngs of people made their way onto the track.

Actually the emergency door things are quite hard to smash, especially when it's too dark to read the instructions telling you how to break them.

But fortunately, mobile phones emit just enough power from their displays to read instructions on trains.

So, that was it, we were out and began the not very long, but fairly arduous in the pitch dark and pouring rain, journey to Preston Park.

By this time it was about 10.30, four hours after we had left Victoria and Dido, who had remained calm and level headed throughout, found the track in the dark a little bit disconcerting.

So Mark had to carry her but apart from that she was totally unfazed by the whole experience - which is more than can be said for the rest of us.