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Good morning. The first time I heard the phrase 'travelling mercies' it conjured up the image of a good book and a glass of red wine in a first class compartment on the journey home to Glasgow. However, I don't think the person who was praying that I might receive 'travelling mercies' had these delights in mind. It's a phrase from the 19th century originally used to ask a blessing on people who were going on long and arduous missionary journeys. More recently it has come into the public domain as the title of a book by Anne Lamott. It might be a pertinent thing to pray or wish for today, at this very hour when many train travellers in England will be discovering the novelties of the revised timetable, especially if the usual train no longer calls at their station or the number of trains has been cut, or the journey time has been lengthened. Train travelling used to be a pleasant experience. I remember in previous decades boarding the 7 o’ clock from Glasgow to London in which most people would be catching up on sleep or digesting the newspapers. When I travelled on that train recently, it was like a business office with people typing assiduously on their laptops, men sitting opposite each other having a pre-meeting conversation; and others on their mobile phones discussing everything from the Dow Jones Share Index to Italian restaurants in the capital which serve gluten-free tagliatelle. All this at 7 o' clock. It makes you wonder how the nation survived when travel time was travel time and work began when you got there. It seems to me that life is not enhanced if a journey through the spring countryside in the company of other human beings becomes little more than an inconvenience interrupting the flow of business. It brings to mind that line in the poem by W H Davies: What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand – or sit – and stare? There is, of course, no Biblical advice regarding relaxing train travel or the nuisance of changed timetables. But I'm drawn to the story in the Hebrew scriptures of Jacob going on a journey, falling asleep and having a dream of angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven. If this morning's travellers can't be given that travelling mercy, maybe they can dream about a good book and a glass of wine on the journey home.