If you want to see a cross-section of the British public at its most eccentric, travel by train.
First we had the wanker who spent the two hours from Preston to Birmingham answering his phone every four or five minutes and yelling: “I’m on the train!” Whether it was to the same person or to everyone in his mobile phone directory, I couldn’t say. Whichever, by the time the train got to Warrington, I had the urge to shove the phone where the sun don’t shine (which, come to think of it, is Warrington …)
Then we had the strange woman who appeared to have spent a king’s ransom so that her handbag could travel in comfort on the seat next to her. Opposite her, a little old dear wittered all the way from Preston to Crewe about this fact after I’d made it politely but abundantly clear that the train was absolutely heaving and I wanted that seat.
And then there was the girl going to rehab (yes, yes, yes – I know because she told me) with two of the heaviest cases you have ever seen. These cases were wedged into the wheelchair slot, and every time the train lurched (which was often, as it was being driven by Driver Kangaroo), they fell over in slow motion, trapping unsuspecting passers-by. She and I managed to heave them off between us at some tiny station in the middle of Hampshire, but I had visions of them jamming the train door and us all being stuck there ‘til the next Millennium.
I count myself lucky to have returned from my annual work trek around the UK without developing swine flu, given the generosity of my fellow passengers when it came to sharing their germs. And considering it’s not yet the school holidays, why were there so many sprogs on the trains, and why do most of them engage in nostril gardening when they think no one’s watching?
OK, you have me bang to rights … I read a lot on my journeys, but I also stared around a lot. I’m a journalist; I’m paid to be nosy. And I always want to know what the people around me are reading. Except most of them weren’t. There were a couple of blokes in suits reading dungeons and dragons-type fantasy. A fair few women were flicking through magazines. But a high proportion of people were either working on their laptops or had iPods clamped to their ears (note to the wanker on the way to Portsmouth: playing Coldplay that loud is a crime against humanity and will be reported to the relevant United Nations committee).
Me, I had Marshall Karp and Mark Billingham for company, and very congenial companions they were too. More next week on why I’m like a pig in the proverbial with my present reading matter …
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