10:24am Friday 10th July 2009
ONE of the few pluses of my driving ban is that I am repeatedly experiencing the generosity of friends who repeatedly offer lifts when it means going out of their way and when I might otherwise be stranded.
But then there are the minuses. I was working in Birmingham this week recording an episode of the lunchtime drama Doctors. This necessitated travelling on the Chiltern Line.
No, my complaint is not about that service; the trains were on time and comfortable. But sadly not everyone who travelled with me made ideal companions.
Returning home on the first night a group of young people got on and promptly turned on their ‘boom box’ or ‘ghetto blaster’ – a large piece of equipment balanced on the perpetrator’s shoulder and turned up full volume – on a train full of people trying to read their books or papers or doze.
The railway children 2009-style sprawled on the seats bellowing dreary obscenities at each other and the world at large. I looked round the carriage only to see the more practised and hardened travellers studiously avoiding eye contact and giving very good impressions of so many wise monkeys.
I realised that were I to challenge this behaviour, which I ached to do, I might find myself alone in doing so and, these days, I could have been offering myself for some desultory knife practice, so reluctantly but probably sensibly I suppressed my desire to remonstrate and kept my gaze on my crossword. It was hard.
The following night, a young woman shared with her mother every detail of a conversation with a friend about their planned holiday in Malaga – for 15 minutes – loudly enough to be heard in the next carriage. I caught the eye of a lady sitting opposite.
We exchanged silent indications of the desire to kill.
When Malaga Mary finally finished a friend joined her, having got on at the next station, and we heard the whole story again, just as loudly.
When they finally got off my hitherto silent friend looked at me and said: “What a truly ghastly young woman.”
We discussed some fairly terminal sanctions we would like to impose and returned to our reading material, until the next moron with a phone got on.
We didn’t have long to wait. This one discussed birthday presents he was giving his girl friend that night. Riveting stuff.
Three months to go.
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