On January 23, diesel multiple-units began working some of the Marylebone suburban services.

When I had first told him the name we'd chosen for our daughter, Abe had suggested that it was a pretty damn waspy title for the offspring of an Indian princess and a Chicago pollock.- - - I never would have chosen the name Victoria but was secretly delighted by it. Amrita first suggested it one hot day in July and we treated it as a joke. It seemed that one of her earliest memories was of arriving by train at Victoria Station in Bombay. That huge edifice - one of the remnants of the British Raj, which evidently still defines India - had always filled Amrita with a sense of awe. Since that time, the name Victoria had evoked an echo of beauty, elegance and mystery in her.

She brightened when I changed the subject.

We will inform HQ as soon as we return, but there still is this small incy little thing . . . The Alliance.