What I learned on a train to Leeds at the weekend

The average delay incurred by a train involved in, or caught up in the aftermath of, a suicide on the tracks is two hours. If it's less than that, according to our guard, 'it's a good day'.

Peak season for rail suicides is just before and straight after Christmas. People who work on the trains call this 'silly season'.

The loose collection of matter that just moments before impact constituted a human being can cover an area that is a mile wide.

Among the subsets of society I hate (and there are many – for someone so congenitally moderate and non-confrontational, I am powered by an apparently limitless well of rage) are those people who, on hearing someone felt sufficiently despairing of their life to end it on a wretched, lonely train track, like to say, 'Selfish bastard.'