Not quite always for the likes of politicians. We went on a family holiday in my youthful years to Ostend, and returned via the classic route through Dover, Victoria, and thence Paddington, where there was no immediate Berks & Hants departure to Taunton, so my father, fresh from his Last Holiday Night visit to the Ostend casino the previous evening, stumped up the Supplements [second class] for the late afternoon Bristol Pullman to Temple Meads, and a connection onward. My only time in the Pullman units, the one very junior memory I retain was it was the first train I ever went in with a PA system (thank God no see it say it sorted autobabble).
The stewards gave an even more flunky air to the car than a normal restaurant car, and my mother was keen to maintain our social stannding, unfortunately let down by me, not only still in beach clothes when I Should Have Been In My Suit in a Train Like This, but also apparently leaviong copious amounts of beach sand all round our seats from my final sandcastle building earlier that morning, plus my bucket and spade etc, which I could not be detached from, all falling from my baggage to the floor and depositing further Ostend beach in the car gangway as we assembled our luggage on arrival at Bristol. My mother did excellent, amusingly overacted, impressions of the stewards' faces as this happened, to family gatherings for many years afterwards, to my continuing chagrin of course!
