Writing from Virgin Trains’ woeful standard class on my way to Retail Week’s conference on the future of the high street in Birmingham.

Retailers would never get away with what train companies do, having a monopoly on an essential service and charging obscene prices for the privilege - in this case £140 for a return, which works out not much less than £1 per minute on the train.

For that you get a seat so cramped you can’t open a laptop, you have to pay for wi-fi access and the buffet (sorry, “shop”) has no hot water so I can’t even get a coffee.

Maybe there’s still a bit of the old-fashioned leftie in me but I just can’t see the value to the economy of privatising essential services which are vital to the nation’s competitiveness and allowing the new owners to hold consumers to ransom.

I’m sure my mood will improve when I get to Brum as we have a great line-up for the day, with retailers such as Boots’ Alex Gourlay and Tesco’s Lucy Neville-Rolfe sharing the podium with politicians and regeneration experts.

Our Manifesto for the High Street campaign has certainly galvanised the opinion that drastic action is needed to help the UK’s struggling high streets and it should be a very interesting debate. I’ll be tweeting during the day at @timdanaher and will post a report on here either later or tomorrow.

Last night Lisa and I had the pleasure of attenting the opening of Anthropologie’s second UK store, in the Kings Road. Urban Outfitters’ grown up sister brand caused a real storm when it made its European debut on Regent Street last year but the Kings Road store is even better, helped by a really unusual space.

Unlike the original, the new store is on (near enough) one level, in a former antiques market down at the Chelsea Town Hall end of the street. The retailer has made great use of the space, opening up windows in the roof which had long been covered to allow light to flood in and really show off the collections. Antropologie is a hard store to describe.

It is as much gallery as shop, with its range as much curated as it is merchandised, featuring curios and objets d’art gathered from around the world, with everything for sale at the right price. The collections are deliberately eclectic, and while some of the price points are breathtaking, there are enough affordable pieces such as glasses and plates to make it accessible.

It’s very affable European chief James Bidwell, who in days gone by was marketing director of Selfridges, said around 20% of the assortment is sourced locally, and that its European website is launching this week. To be honest though, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, this is one of those ventures that reinforces the importance of physical stores.

The Anthropologie experience is hard to replicate through a website and a parcel - it’s about the store as much as the product, and the new shop is sure to reinvigorate the far end of Kings Road, which has been flagging in recent years. And while you’re not going to have an Anthropologie on every high street around the UK, the principle of having stores worth visiting remains one which is valid for high streets anywhere around the country. Which brings us neatly back round to today’s conference….