God bless SNCF. Truly it is the world’s best railway company. It just goes to show what can be done if you’re happy to run it at a massive loss courtesy of several million euros from the French public pocket.

Like all great train journeys, not everything went quite to plan on the London - Provence - Geneva - Rome - Venice trip. Apart from the fact we got stranded in Geneva without a train, a hotel or any money, there was also the small matter of our tickets for the overnight route from Venice back to Paris being returned to SNCF with address unknown scrawled on the envelope. The address was known, as it turned out: it was us who got it wrong.

So anyway, the only way to get replacement tickets was to buy new ones, apparently, but a very helpful woman at Avignon station promised to refund the originals if we returned the new ones once they’d been used.

Fat chance of that, we thought, and expected to lose our 100 euros. Nonetheless, we dropped them in at Gare du Nord in Paris on Friday and asked a guy at a desk to pass them on to Avignon. Today, exactly five working days later, a refund for 100 euros showed up on a bank statement. The date on the entry: 13th October. Just one working day after the tickets were handed over. In that time an envelope without a stamp made its way from Paris in the north to Avignon in the south, the covering letter was translated from English to French, and someone, somewhere (perhaps in SNCF HQ back up in Lille, even further north than Paris) transferred some money straight into a foreign (UK) bank account.

The chances of that ever happening here: nil.

So, a good end to a good week and an enjoyable first three days in a brand new job. Had my phone rung so far, I guess there’s a chance I may have answered it with the wrong magazine name, but other than that I feel I’ve been there an age already.

It’s probably the fact I was reading proofs on day one - picking up pretty much from where I left off at PCW a week ago, and the fact it’s been three fairly late nights in a row, but once again I feel excited about getting up in the morning and going to work.

And I’ve not felt like that in a long time.

1. Travel
   What a fortnight. London - Paris - St Remy - Avignon - Lyon - Geneva - Milan - Rome - Venice - Paris - London....
   
   
2. Roman Holiday
   Seven hours, it took, to plan September's trip. From the end of a late breakfast that drew to a close at noon to the time...
   
   
3. In a rush
   What a marvellous feeling to know that I don't have to go to work again for a whole two weeks. That's not to say there's...