In which I am typing on a weird French keyboard.

Printed 18/12/08

Eurostar is a wonderful conception. I am not disputing this.

In fact, it is one of my favourite subjects for pondering during my weekly pondering sessions, to marvel over how they ever managed to move all that earth away in time to shove a tunnel in. It's amazing, I completely acknowledge that. Like ships in bottles, or the way they keep the inside of Lindor melty while the outside is solid.

But frankly, I think they could have done more.

It struck me during this week's London to Paris jaunt, the second in three months (can one qualify as a jet-setter if your main travel perk is buying Heat magazine because the time difference undoes the trashiness?), that the Eurostar people are missing a trick or two.

"Are we still in Kent?" I ask Tara.

"No, we're under the sea now."

"We're in..? Already? With no warning? But I didn't hold my breath or pinch my nose or assume the safety position! There was no Thunderbirds countdown, or Going Underground piped into the carriages while a crowd of smiley stewardesses wave us goodbye from the white cliffs. That's a bigger anticlimax than this M&S Christmas dinner sandwich."

What about a bit more ceremony, hmm Eurostar? Hype it up more, please the people. Cash in on the still amazing fact we are UNDER THE SEA.

Clearly, the answer is to make it a bit of a white knuckle ride, something like the Legoland log flume, plunging at a 60-degree angle into the foamy depths of The Channel and printing out a nice souvenir photo of the bug-eyed screaming passengers in their waterproof ponchos to take away as they get off at the other end.

And while, of course, I appreciate the job the engineers had to do, what with one of them holding the earth up while the other one quickly shoves bits of wall against it – like shutting the kitchen cupboard doors before an avalanche of food falls out – but can I just ask what they were thinking when they made the walls opaque? Glass, surely, would have been a much better idea. You could watch the fish swim past, take some hilarious photos of you pretending to kiss a dogfish, and generally have an educational experience.

But there we are – no flume, no fish, no fun. Instead, we read The Guardian supplements and shriek at each other across the aisle and play "I spy", a game which dies a quick death when Kirsty guesses straight off that my "A" is for antimacassar and we probably spend too much time together.

Chief discovery of the whole journey was, "Look! If you close your eyes, then open them, the quality of light and brown furnishings make it look like we're in the 70s."

And if that isn't a call for a revamp, then I don't know what is.