We all know how frustrating trains can be, fabricating multiple inconveniences to our lives, and here are a few of my hates.
Let’s start with the heat. Most of the time, you are sitting in a legitimate oven, people’s habits and actions, never seem to fail in providing a little more heated anger to the day. What’s the best way to cool off? Open the window, but only because the trains haven’t got air-con installed. It’s not as if we are in 2018. Oh, wait. Can you believe we’ve had “modern air-con” for 116 years? The first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902. This needs some explaining to me, as of why thousands of us arrive at work, dripping in everyone else’s condensed sweat. So yes, we resort to opening the windows on the train as the best way to improve the flow of cool air. The condensation on the window! Your morning residue is in the air, you’re breathing it, I’m breathing it, he’s breathing it, she’s breathing it, we’re all breathing it. Open the fucking window man!
Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t get to the bloody window, because some crazy, bizarre, cold-blooded person is sat under it and it’s deemed unethical to reach across.
Which brings me to my next point. I speak for London trains specifically when I say there is a seating code. Unless the train is packed tighter than tuna in a tin, which is usual, there is a seating plan, which is to sit in alternative seats. This then allows everyone to stretch their legs out in a comfortable position before some loony woman sits down with fifteen shopping bags and two irritating, petulant children.
I’ve just set myself up for the next item. Bags. This is perhaps just my OCD, but bag handles overhanging really bugs me, though as I said, this could just be me being petty. However! People with bags on seats usually creates an incredible show of arrogance. Funnily enough when you step on to the train that you paid the same great British monies for, they seem to believe you are causing THEM inconvenience for having to move their bag. I don’t know about you guys, but asking someone to move their bag is a complete tongue in cheek scenario. That reminds me. Once upon a time, I was sitting on a train, in a reserved 2 seated section, when a family of two parents and a baby stepped on the train. Cool, except what happened next wasn’t cool. They thought it was OK to sit in the bank of four seats in front, HOWEVER, leave their pram behind them on the spare chair next to me. As I mentioned, this was a fancy train, meaning the spare was actually reserved. The father in question asked me to move over to place the pram next to me! Completely stunned, I complied. Until I realized what happened. I may have just put up with it, but the baby had evidently done a stinky at one point, and that was the line crossed. What did I do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was so shocked and ridiculed by his actions, that I just sat there working myself up in my own pit of anger.
Alas, this rant is not yet over as unbelievable as it is, as I write this post, another hate has just occurred. Approximately twelve inches from my leg is a dirty, peeling foot in a filthy, worn flip-flop. Yes, it’s the feet on chairs scenario. I understand it’s comfortable to put your feet up, but it’s not necessary on the train or any form of public transport. Think about the floor you walk on, urines, chewing gum, saliva, everything you don’t want on your clothes nor you. Perhaps that example doesn’t burst your imagination bubble. How about a nightclub. The toilets are sticky, the dancefloor is sticky, and let me tell you that isn’t just-drinks. That grime is now on your shoes, which is now in the seats, which is now on your clothes! And I speak for everyone here, that we are all guilty of wiping our hands on our side and eating after. Just leave your feet on the floor, where they are supposed to be.