Still dreaming of a luxury sleeper

A PROMOTIONAL partnership between the Caledonian Sleeper and Penguin Books a few years ago meant that sleepy customers were startled to find a random paperback waiting for them in their overnight bed.

Perhaps Jane Austen’s Emma or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped helped the miles fly by, but the friend who got The Penguin Book of Vampires had a fraught and uneasy journey, and plenty of time to ponder that the ‘Caledonian Sleeper’ sounded like the nickname for a serial killer.

No free books nowadays – and still no sockets for anyone needing to charge up their laptop, tablet or phone. No sign of the swanky new berths that were supposed to roll out this spring either. These have been shunted to the autumn, along with an end to the age-old budget option of sharing a cabin.

I’ve somehow missed out on the cheap thrill of sleeping with a stranger. Every time I’ve rolled up for my standard class adventure with my very best jimjams, the upper berth has been insultingly empty.

Still, given that people get buried in bigger coffins, sharing a cabin with a stranger sounds like a fiendish exercise in boundary management. Even sharing as a couple has limits. The Caledonian once tried to entice couples with an ad campaign that whispered seductively, ‘Let the romance start here’. Yeah, sure... in TINY bunk beds.