SOMEONE in the office has been reading about positive thinking, karma and other Hoddle twaddle.

Result is that everything which goes wrong (such as printers omitting three pages of latest issue of magazine) is blamed on negative energy emanating from tense members of staff (rather than sloppy workmanship on behalf of printers).

This morning, when I arrived late and flustered, after nearly an hour's delay on the train (points failure) plus a further twenty minutes on tube (stuck in tunnel), she told me calmly that my trains are probably delayed a lot because of the negative energy I exude.

Tried to put her right, in that negative energy caused by lateness of trains rather than the other way round.

But, she was having none of it, telling me it would only take a little "mind over matter" effort on my part to get to work by 9am every morning.

Unlike features editor, who has suggested much the same every day for the past few months, she doesn't mean that kind of mind over matter which entails setting the alarm clock an hour earlier and actually getting up when it goes off.

The mind over matter Positive Thinker has in mind is the sort where, when the train stops in a field somewhere outside Haywards Heath, rather than silently cursing the rail company and glancing at your watch to no useful purpose, you remain calm and think the train back into action again.

Positive Thinker is blessed with the luxury of a flat five minutes walk from our office and is of course talking from the point of view of one who has not been tested to the limit by endless delays and cancellations.

Nevertheless, while publicly scoffing at her theory, privately admit to be prepared to try anything where trains are concerned to get them going again.

Fellow commuters' sod's law theory (that train will generally lurch back into action if you are returning from the buffet, juggling two or three cups of coffee and a couple of bacon sandwiches) seems to work more often than not.

So, as I jumped on the 6.36 this evening, I was quite looking forward to a trackside fire at East Croydon so I could quench it with calm.

Connex however had other ideas and sped south without so much as a 30-second breather for lights to change.

Even station stopping times seemed faster than usual with passengers effortlessly passing on and off the platform in moments.

The train eventually arrived in Brighton a good three minutes early.

The following morning it was the same.

Having made it on to the 7.45 at about 7.44 and 53 seconds, the train left the station before the door was closed and, with a repeat of the previous night's performance, arrived at Victoria with minutes to spare.

Iattributed this unusual state of affairs to sod's law theory - ie, I was looking forward to experimenting with positive thinking on these two journeys and was therefore happy to be delayed.

Train therefore decided to arrive early.

Positive Thinker, however, believes it demonstrates how usual amount of negative energy surrounding self is causing unnecessary delays.

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