HAVE you ever had one of those hot-faced moments of hospitality failure?

You know, when a tentative voice from behind the door of the downstairs loo alerts you to the fact that you forgot the spare toilet roll, and guests have been doing tactful things with Kleenex for several hours?

Or when a largish visitor sits down on a kitchen chair and there's a sharp crack, immediately followed by the guest dropping below the horizon with a gasp, and you wish you'd reminded your husband to do some urgent repairs to the cross-bars? (Actually, the hostess this happened to was my mother, who luckily lives more than 400 miles outside the Chronicle's distribution zone.)

I had one of those moments, on behalf of all Sevenoaks, last week.

EP, visiting from Tunbridge Wails by train on a cold, wet, windy day, e-mailed to thank me for coffee and safe seating. But… "Sevenoaks Station," he observed, "doesn't have a waiting room."

Flippin' heck! I'd never noticed! Can you believe that our main station offers not a single platform-based facility to shelter from the elements?

Otford, last time I travelled from there, had a waiting room WITH BOOKS.

Tunbridge Wells has a coffee shop, right on the platform.

Here, we've got some metal benches and a rush-hour coffee kiosk. This is terrible. (Not the coffee, you understand.)

Of course, we've got some tables and a couple of bistro chairs up on the main concourse.

But that's a good two minutes away from the platforms on busy days, when you're fighting against a flood of new arrivals and the dratted barrier keeps spitting back your ticket.

On really grungy days, the delicate traveller can hang out on the covered bridge. Standing, poised to make a frantic flight down the stairs in the hope of squeezing onto the train at its bulging middle section (if you want to be sure of getting a standing place at the front of the train, for fast egress at Charing Cross, you need to be up at the far end of the platform, with an umbrella and gritted teeth.)

Why on earth don't we have a modest shelter where a person could read her copy of the Chronicle without it turning to crumpled mush?

A place where commuters – even just a few at a time, say the elderly, the infirm and the odd journalist with a nasty cold – could keep warm and toasty until the last moment, then step serenely out to do battle with the beeping doors and the surprisingly large gap between platform and train?

Waiting rooms are, of course, spectres from the past, from times when train travel had a touch of class and customers expected a smidgeon of comfort.

Nowadays we're just grateful if the train has a driver and you can find a seat without a fine coating of Heineken on it.

You know what this means? Tunbridge Wells is more refined than Sevenoaks.

The shame. Can we bear it?