Train Related Miscellany

For the attention of current or potential train station designers: If you have a platform 4a and 4b, don’t still also have a platform 4. It doesn’t make logical sense and it leaves people who have no knowledge of this fact running with heavy suitcases to avoid missing their train.

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In happier news, I was afraid of trains. I know, this doesn’t seem ‘happier’ like it was advertised, but if you’d allowed me to continue instead of being impatient and pedantic. Sheesh!

As I was saying, I was afraid of trains. We’re not talking a full-on phobia here, merely a disconcerting feeling whenever traveling via said transport. I don’t know what it was, perhaps the noise, or the shaking, or the feeling of being herded like cattle, or the small issue that if the thing hits a rock, we’d all perish in a huge fireball.

But three years of university, and the need to use trains to get to and from work every weekend, kind of cured me. I learnt the Zen art of zoning out and concentrating on a book or my music or just the inside maze of my head so that I didn’t mind the shaking or the noise or feeling like a sheep.

Today, however, I got to experience a moment that has secured my lack of fear in my mind. I stood, not out of choice but out of being squished, next to the door of the carriage, with the window open. Three years ago this would have been fairly close to the pinnacle of fear for me. Not only would I have to worry about de-railing stones, but also of being sucked out of the window to crash painfully and fatally to a blood-soaked, mangled death.

But all I thought was ‘cool’. That was it. I watched the world whiz by at train-speed and pretended I was hovering backwards for a short period and did not think a simple bad, negative, scaredy cat thing.

I’m no longer afraid of trains. Next up: Roller Coasters.

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This is Jessica’s first time on a train. She seems to be coping quite well, but mainly because the train has kindly put into place plug sockets which allow her power. They have yet to install some kind of Internet connection though, so whilst this is being typed during travel, it will be uploaded at home.

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I also think I’ve started a laptop craze. It seems that I have subconsciously granted people permission to open up laptops and work. Three people have looked across at me before laptopping themselves. There is a forth man with a laptop bag. I’ll get him!

* * *

Whilst Jessica is coping well with train travel, Wilson the penguin just won’t shut up! He’s just sitting on top of my bag, squawking away miserably. I feel people think I’ve stolen a bird from somewhere.

To worry them a little, I’ve begun kicking my bag hard before looking up at them with apologetic eyes and saying “He was a present”.

* * *
I have come to the conclusion, not necessarily today but it is today I will express it, that the general public really have misplaced anger issues whilst traveling via train. I understand that whoever was responsible for booking seats on this train has seriously overbooked. I can even appreciate that being packed like sardines next to complete strangers isn’t most people’s preferable way to travel.

What I don’t get is the anger. What is going to be solved by being grumpy? It isn’t like it is fault of the people currently digging into your stomach, so I fail to see why people glare at them or react harshly.

Surely, a more Zen-like (and I am aware this is the second time Zen has been mentioned in this piece, but it seems riding public transport requires a lot of it) approach is needed. Yes, we are trapped together but the key word is ‘we’. There should be some camaraderie surely. Like blitzed London (on a MUCH smaller scale), we should be looking out for one another, what with being in the same boat and all.

We should laugh at the whole thing together, shaking our fists in the air at ‘society’ and the state of the government and reminiscing that things were much better when we were kids or would be better if we were in charge. Isn’t that what adults do?

In an attempt to support this kind of behavior, I took to rolling my eyes in a ‘Gosh! Look at the situation we are currently in. This will certainly make good anecdotal fodder tomorrow. Isn’t life odd?’ way.

One girl returned the gesture and for a brief moment we had a ‘thing’, a connection over the gulf of being strangers. Everyone else tried their damn hardest to avoid eye-contact all together, and I was left rolling my eyes to the air. And that just made me look like I had a medical problem.

People need to chill out!

:D

http://h-kon.deviantart.com/art/Trains-of-2006-37165197