GOOD DAYS sometimes are hard to come by. So when instead of fighting my way into one of London's overpopulated underground trains I found myself sitting in the middle of nowhere and staring out the window at two sheep, I knew this was not going to be one of them.

Life in the country isn't always a bed of clover, and when it comes to getting from Point X to Point Y, stinging nettles are more likely to come to mind. Travel in the boondocks is often a journey into the surreal with one transfer at the absurd.

Take, for example, what passes for public transport in the village of Kidlington. The once-a-week bus to Oxford arrives there at 9:02 in the morning and leaves on the return leg to Kidlington at 9:13. Passengers are advised to use the express lane at the supermarket, two at a time when possible.

In Croughton, the wide spot in the country lane where my wife Elizabeth and I have resided for the past three months, the bus to Northampton 24 miles up the road leaves on Tuesday morning and returns the following Monday. Passengers are advised to take along tents and sleeping bags and carefully check the use-by dates for any eggs or fish purchased.

But for real adventure into the unknown, it's tough to beat British Rail transport out here in the sticks - and if you are planning a trip to England that involves traveling on trains, be aware that the schedules are composed by the same people who simplified the income tax forms and who write Pulitzer Prize-quality fiction as part of their job.

Despite living out here amid all the fresh ozone and cow pats and horse farts, I still have to do the 70 miles to London four or five times a month on business. Since driving in that berg is about as pleasant as sticking my hand in a basket of pit vipers with dyspepsia, I take the rails.

On the basis of my most recent experience on the rail network, I am beginning to look rather more favorably on pit vipers.

After wiping out a small but nevertheless worrisome percentage of the traveling public through a series of train crashes, British Rail is "upgrading" its network, possibly for the first time since train robberies were in vogue (bandits in those days could depend on trains running on time).

Anytime anyone or any company in this country uses words or phrases such as "upgrading" and "improvements" and "for a better service," it almost always means it will cost more and will take more time and result in more inconvenience.

(One day on a building just off Fleet Street in London, they put up a sign saying "improvements underway for your greater convenience." It is now four years later, the scaffolding is in an advanced state of rust and everyone alive has forgotten what form the "greater convenience" was supposed to take in the first place.)

Anyway, what that meant in my case is that, because of "rail works," the Banbury-to-London train that I usually take no longer runs from Banbury but from another station, at a place called Bicester North. (Sometimes, it also doesn't go to London, but that's another sad tale.)

Since Bicester North is 16 miles closer to London and British Rail is involved, the trip naturally takes about 40 minutes longer. This is because they have to run a train up from London to get us. (To be fair, to station one there the previous evening would mean a driver's having to overnight in Bicester, a town with nightlife on a par with that of an Amish farm.)

On this particular Sunday morning, the train rolled in from London and I took my accustomed seat in what would be the rear car going back, thus avoiding the hordes of clueless mothers and their ankle biters who tend to infest the more forward carriages.

Except that when the train began to move, the section that I was settling down in began rolling backward. It was headed not to London, but to Banbury, in the opposite direction.

I was trapped.

After a few miles, the train slowed to a crawl, then stopped. We - the driver and I and not another living soul - were stranded somewhere between Banbury and a tiny blot on the map called King's Sutton. The minutes crept by.

An hour later, when passengers in the front end of the train were wading through the accumulated scattered newspapers, beer cans and barf of London, I was 70 miles away, staring out the window at the two sheep. I envied them. One had a bad left front leg, but at least it didn't have to sit in a motionless British Rail car.

In due course, I did eventually get to London, an hour and 45 minutes late. On the return trip to the rail station, I took a subway train whose carriages apparently rolled off the assembly line the year that Methuselah graduated from high school.

You have guessed, of course, that the subway system broke down. Which cost me a 16-buck cab fare that got me to the station in time to miss three trains back to the country. Total travel time for the day on public transport: five hours 45 minutes. Total distance covered: 156 miles.

Oh, I did telephone British Rail to inquire as to why, when the rest of that train went to London, my section went to Banbury. I was advised that an infinitely greater wisdom had decreed that the train be split in two and that the Banbury destination was posted on the rear (i.e. my) part.

Yeah, well, okay, so it was. It just goes to show that even British Rail can't get it wrong all the time.

Thought for the Week: Love is free. It's diapers that are expensive.

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