To the sound of furious tutting across Surrey and Hampshire platforms, South-West Trains has been providing an arse-clenchingly bad service this month full of delays and cancellations while Waterloo station undergoes major works. This RollOnFriday reporter is caught up in the first-world transport chaos.

Parachuted in to deal with the crisis, South West Train's PR team has been busy trying to calm customers by reducing fares to reflect the upheaval by handing out unnecessary freebies. Cheery train staff at Waterloo have been dishing out ice-cream to trick our brains into thinking we're on a seaside holiday; but after the vanilla hit, reality kicks in and we remember we're on a bleak concourse, staring at a list of cancelled trains, and we shouldn't have stripped down to our speedos.

"It will have completely melted by the time your train arrives"

The train company has also been arming commuters with bizarre survival packs. First, what appears to be a condom wrapper:

Severe delays and packed trains will allow strangers to get to know each other intimately by the time they reach Clapham

But on opening the packet:

A sugar rush to compensate for missing that interview or arriving late for a funeral

And in a wildly misconceived corporate idea, South-West trains is providing stranded commuters with the world's most boring set of Top Trumps. "STATION FACTS":
 

"Hi honey, I'm massively delayed and can't make Milo's first birthday. On the plus side, I have Brockenhurst which is one of the top cards for platforms"

Although an accurate card should probably look like this: