SITTING on the train a few hundred yards past Gatwick when the following helpful announcement let passengers know why we'd been gazing at the same car park for more than 20 minutes: "Ladies and gentlemen, apologies for the delay... ahh, ahh mana do too fa la ddda da da da."

No typing error here but as close as I can to an exact phonetic reproduction of what appeared to have been said.

So used to announcements of this type, I barely gave it a second thought but French family who boarded at Gatwick, replete with designer luggage and near perfect command of English, obviously believed their near perfect command was not so near perfect as they had thought.

"Excuse me," said Monsieur French family, leaning far enough in my direction for me to pick up a whiff of aftershave mingled with garlic, "Dis train is delayed, the announcer says, but I'm afraid I am not able to comprehend the reason why."

"Neither am I," I said and since his expression of raised eyebrows demanded further explanation, "I think it's a special technique developed by rail announcers when they have a particularly poor excuse for a delay."

"Mais oui," smiled Monsieur French family, "I think it is what we call le deliberate distortion."

Either he was directly translating some French idiom I didn't know or, with minutes of having arrived on British soil, had neatly encapsulated one of the most annoying things about public transport.

You know as soon as an announcer hits the tannoy whether he's going to say the train is about to arrive on time or tell you the reason for some hideous delay.

If it's good news, they stand a good few inches from the microphone, clear their throats and enunciate clearly.

If, like this morning, some technical or manpower failure you can only guess at is going to make you late for work, they cough and splutter, cosy up to the microphone and adopt a particularly polluted version of estuary English.

Frenchman smiled again and proceeded to translate a version of our conversation to the rest of his family who smiled in a smug "you'd never have to deal with this sort of inconvenience or sloppy pronunciation on our fast, sleek TGVs" sort of way before the announcer rejoined us with "Ah ha hum, Mner, mner, snuffle, chuffle, snff.... da da da... few minutes".

Afew minutes later the train failed to get going but a hapless conductor did shoot through the carriage, neither stopping to check tickets nor pausing to catch anyone's eye lest we ask what the hell is going on.

Eventually we did get moving and were told on arrival at Victoria that the train "now arriving on platform 16 was delayed due to a!"

Hoped the famille had made straight for the taxi rank and had not opted for the underground which, within minutes, had stopped in a tunnel for reasons best described as "brrr frrr grrr drrrr..." etc.

Naturally, none of these excuses cut much ice with editor who, on demanding why I was late for work again, was suitably unimpressed by my attempts to dodge her questions by looking at the floor and mumbling into the top of my sweater.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.