A lot of stuff goes down on a train. In my mind, I seem to start judging people based purely on what they look like and how they speak, plus whether or not they’re nice to me. This is a really dangerous thing to do, but when your best friend is a bottle of Harrogate Spa water you paid way too much for from the “buffet”, your options are somewhat limited.
So I glance across. One guy in a batman jumper? Most likely a rapist. Didn’t help that he wore a leather jacket and gloves that have definitely felt jugular veins before. He also had an eyebrow piercing. Well he must be a gay rapist then. My bum clenches inside. Two businessmen step on the train in their full Duchamp attire. They sit down with their Macbook Airs sipping wine from a plastic screw top bottle they just bought off the paraplegic guy with the trolley. They look like tools with all their margins, accounts and profit projections splayed out across the table. Most of the time, my judgments are usually wrong in some way, but this time round, I really wanted to lock them in a bank with nothing other than a wallet and a calculator. That should keep em quiet.
A person in bright red jeans and rainbow mittens sits down on my right. I genuinely can’t tell whether they’re a boy or a girl. He/she has the same shoes I had at fifteen though. That’s pretty embarrassing. It suggests that the clothes I grew up with in the future could go to a jumble sale, be seen by a lesbian teenager and bought. And I bet she’d have a smile on those chops of hers too. One girl behind me on my left keeps singing “Since you went away my heart breaks everyday” over and over again. I swear to God I’m going to punch her in the breast if she keeps going. She continues, but in a chipmunk voice, before revealing she’s just found a used tampon wrapped in tissue in her handbag. I’m not going anywhere near her.
So I start looking out the window into the dark woods rolling past me, picking out the top spots I could hide a body in. I found a particularly appealing ditch under a log bridge in Winchester that would fit the “Bat man-fiddler” in nicely. Perhaps even with enough room for a pair of unisex trainers to fit comfortably down next to him. I also see a Blair Witch-esque small, run down cottage that could be the new home of the businessmen. I really hope there’s a wine cellar underneath. A rustling right next to my ear. I turn round to one of those suit-suit things that stops them from getting wet and creased and all that. I forgive him though, purely because he looks like Louis Theroux, and I like Louis Theroux.
Santa disguised as a South-Western train conductor pops his head over the shoulder of the suit-suit and asks me for my ticket. I can instantly tell he’s assuming, as most toothless folk in red felt waistcoats do, that I’ve skived to get onto the train. They over-estimate my ability to teleport from one side of a metal barrier to the other. I’m actually pretty flattered he thinks I can do that. I could go on Panorama. For the giggles and knowing full well he can’t read for sh*t, I pass him an old ticket and my student rail card. He tells me in a hangman’s tone that I have to sign the back of my card straight away, otherwise my card isn’t valid which means my ticket isn’t valid which means I have to pay sixty pounds, which basically means I’m screwed. So does that mean if I do sign the card, my ticket to Leeds from last year becomes valid? I ask for his pen and didn’t give it back. I think he forgot. As he trundled away and I twiddled with my newly acquired writing implement, I admire his effort for sticking to the book. I do however think that as much as he’s the best employee South-Western trains has during the recession, he does need to get his ass laid.
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