Commuter Virus

Years ago, when I was a fully functional, reasonably mentally stable member of the human race I used to work in an office around 15 miles away from home. This meant a walk from my place of residence, embarking on a train, disembarking at the location and walking aside a vaguely terrifying main road to the office. At home time it was pretty much the same, just in reverse obviously. Some people used to complain about the commute, others used it as a chance to catch up on their reading, others would sit silently slugging down enough caffeine to allow them to speak to fellow colleagues without biting their heads off – to be honest, if nothing else it was a fascinating study of human behaviour really.

And me? I actually quite enjoyed it; the people watching, the chit chat over the plastic tables, the finding out if your ticket was going to get checked and if it wasn’t, moaning about buying a season ticket and having it ignored (before the introduction of barriers of course). There was also the ‘who can read the free newspaper quick enough to get to the cartoons and horoscopes before the end of the journey’ race which generally ended with a friend of mine nodding sagely and saying ‘Hmm, yeah, Nemi was good today I guess’. One thing that always fascinated me was the way people act on a train, the sort of etiquette that exists. I don’t know what it is like in more densely populated areas like London but in Edinburgh there seemed to be a system where, for some annoying reason, every time anyone got on the train they would immediately congregate around the doorway – despite the fact that there were oodles of free seats on which there were no people, feet, bags or books. Now, it’s easier to get off if you’re near the doorway, I get it but it is not for EVERYBODY ELSE WHO HAS TO STRUGGLE THROUGH THE THRONG OF PEOPLE TO GET OFF!!!! I am particularly annoyed about this as it caused me to miss my stop on more than four occasions. Perhaps I’m just too polite to shout ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!’ and I should be more assertive but in the same way, I was trying to maintain the stress free environment, not causing a fuss, observing some sort of unspoken etiquette. After watching this happen for approximately six years I started being more outspoken about it but always was eyed by fellow commuters to not complain, to keep the peace. It was particularly frustrating for people with bikes as trying to insert a bike onto a train through a group of people in the doorway, all steadfastly studying their newspapers, is no small feat. It wasn’t a lack of intelligence, the people in the doorway were often chatting amiably about complicated tasks at work and so I can only guess it is either a lack of common sense, a furious desire to be the first one off the train as if it were a race or a phenomena not yet revealed to me.

Then there was the Train Nemesis. Bear with me, this one is a bit esoteric but after travelling on any mode of transport for any length of time (in this case trains, or it would be Bus Nemesis wouldn’t it?) you start to develop an intense dislike for a particular commuter for no real reason at all. It’s an odd phenomena, it could be the noisy way the person eats across the table from you, it could be the person who always tries to hog your favourite seat or it could be someone who is pretending to read a high brow book but clearly not actually reading it as it takes them 3 years and in this time they open it and then stare out of the window holding it up so people can see just how damn smart they are! Sorry, got a bit carried away there. It could be the person who talks loudly enough to prevent anyone from reading or they could be talking about the most banal stuff that you feel like shouting at them or moving seats, but you can’t as their voice seems to resonate around the whole carriage! For a friend of mine, his Train Nemesis seemed to join his path to the train station and each time he would try to race past the man who became known as ‘The Running Man’. This seemed to happen every day and my friend often couldn’t work out how the man always seemed to get ahead of him and so he would hurry too. It seemed to intensely annoy him to the point of competition. I daresay that onlookers would have mentally noted them as ‘The Running Men’ due to this :) For me it was the ‘Man Who Always Tries To Steal My Seat’. Every day I would hurry down to the train station and TMWATTSMS would be waiting on the platform, looking nonchalant but he knew what he was doing, waiting to pounce! When the train arrived everyone would surge towards the train door. Being small it was usually easy to manoeuvre my way into the crowd and sometimes people would let me on the train first and I would coolly walk through the door, thanking people, before hurrying desperately to the seat next to ‘The Bunny Window’ (More about this later), in the corner with the table seats. Occasionally he would smile or scowl but always his expression read ‘you won today, but soon I will be victorious!’. Sometimes I think he would get on the stop before just too annoy me and as I didn’t see him at the station I would think ‘haha! The seat is mine!’ but then I’d clamber onto the busy train only to realise he was sprawled out in MY seat, eating a muffin!!! A Muffin!!! His eyes saying ‘You have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch me out’ – and presumably he had. It was a weird thing, a sort of dislike for somebody due to no real basis at all, it would fester within you. You would never actually do anything about said nemesis but they were always there.

Then there were the Train Guardians. These are people whom are so regular in their daily commute that, if you don’t see them, you know that you are late for the train. For me it was ‘The Tall Man’, ‘Lady with the Beret’ and ‘The Twins who aren’t really Twins’. Basically I would leave my flat and 9 times out of 10 I would pass a tall stern looking grey haired man whom would wear a jacket or carry it along with an umbrella – the closer he was to my flat when I passed him, the later I was for the train. Then, further along the journey I would cross paths with ‘Lady with the Beret’ who would generally be hurrying and I didn’t stand a chance of catching up with her but just seeing her was comforting, no train missed yet. Then, just before the train station there was the tv shop that always had breakfast TV on with a clock on screen – anything after 8:10am and it was Game Over, 30 minutes wait minimum, mostly in the cold to catch the next train. Finally on the journey there were two girls who seemed to go to school near the train station, they looked so alike you would briefly think they were twins but up close they looked little like each other really. Again, the further away you saw ‘The Twins who aren’t really Twins’ from the train station, the more chance you had of missing the train. It was pretty foolproof really, even if one failed you, you always had a backup Train Guardian. I am not sure what these people were like in real life, I hope they’re lovely people, but they kept me on the right track train time wise and for that I wish to publicly thank them.

The aforementioned ‘Bunny Seat’ was a seat next to a window adjacent to the possible sighting of bunnies next to the track, generally to make the journey more pleasant it was important to observe a series of games, one of which was animal spotting. For example, in a part of Fife, it appeared that someone had released a pet rabbit into the wild population and this meant that as well as the usual brown wild bunnies, some of them were pure black and a mix of brown and black so it was interesting to try and spot as many types of bunny as possible. Then there were the occasional deer that frequented the fields surrounding the station and so spotting one was always good. There was the heron that sat patiently near a pool of water near one of the stations, but only on some occasions. There were seals in the pool at the Deep Sea World Centre that you could spot while crossing the Forth Rail Bridge (I called one of the seals ‘Pancake’, I’m not sure why, it just ensured that he had a name I could call him). Generally spotting any animal would generally send me into a smile of delight and I would feel like the journey was somehow more worth it that just going to and from work.

I always found the journey into work slightly more difficult than the journey back, mainly because I’m not a morning person. Some people can just leap out of bed, ready for the day. For me, it seems to take roughly four hours after waking to gain any semblance of normality. Sometimes getting the train would be a monumental struggle in the mornings due to my sensitivity to and lack thereof caffeine. A friend of mine and I had a signal, if he hadn’t had his coffee and therefore did not want to speak to me he would simply nod almost imperceptibly and continue listening to his MP3 player and I knew instantly not to chirpily attempt to make conversation. On the few occasions I tried to be cheery in this situation it was met with either a steely glare or a ‘Hello’ through gritted teeth. On the mornings in which coffee had been, or was currently being consumed, generally he would be in good spirits and we would have a jolly chat. The only thing is, as I regularly got on the train with a few people I knew, if I was having a bad morning I’m just way too polite to ignore anyone so I would attempt to manoeuvre myself onto the part of the train where no one I knew would be. This invariably backfired though as there would be someone whose car had broken down and had to take the train that day and would be hugely chirpy while I would smile weakly and try to forcibly wake myself up by will alone.

One thing I always found funny was when random commuters would become heavily involved in the conversation a friend and I were sharing that they would almost involuntarily join in. For example, my now husband and I were discussing cartoons or some such thing when my husband said ‘Apparently the cartoon character Goofy was meant to be a cow, not a dog’. I asked him what he was talking about, or words to that effect, and said that I thought he was a dog. Husband then said he had read somewhere that Goofy was meant to be a cow, at which point the commuter in front of us put down his paper and said ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just crap! He’s a dog!’. We then entered a full debate with the man regarding the species of a cartoon character until we almost agreed to meet the man the next day to see who was right! I once saw a lady lean across the aisle and tell a fellow passenger that her boyfriend sounded like a jerk and she should dump him as the girl had been trying to make a decision for most of the journey between noisy sobs.

We used to have the most entertaining chats on the train and another friend of mine used to produce things from his pocket on a fairly random basis – he once had a pipe in his pocket even though he didn’t smoke, it was huge too, proper Sherlock Holmes style. He also got on the train one day and produced balloons from his pocket which he proceeded to blow up and we had fun batting them around the carriage much to the probable chagrin of the other passengers. One balloon seemed to escape at every station we stopped!

When I stayed in San Diego for six weeks several years ago I struck up a good rapport with the hotel shuttle drivers Wayne and Felicia. Felicia drove the bus to the office I was frequenting in the morning via a few stops in La Jolla and we got on famously. We chatted about all sorts of things and she even took me out to see the sights in her car on the one day that I actually managed to get away from work. Wayne drove the evening bus back from the office and he had an amazing sense of humour – a man with a firm twinkle in his eye who seemed to love the complexities of language whom I regularly confused with both my accent and some of my words – I’m afraid he may have learned a few more swear words from me during my time there. I used to wait for him to come back from taking hotel guests to various locations in the late evening on breaks from my computer and we’d sit and chat in the smoking area (that’s when I was a regular smoker that is). Wayne and Felicia made my daily commute so much fun, without them I would have probably sat in silence the whole way to and from work. I think Wayne even had us all singing on the bus at one point! Happy days!

Let’s face it, you have to keep yourself amused on routine trips. The thing is, I’ve always been able to settle happily on a train or bus for long journeys. Apparently as a very small child I liked nothing more than to sit in my pushchair and watch the world go by and I would scream if I had to get out of it. Don’t worry, I don’t scream these days if I have to get off a train/bus – that would be impolite to other passengers.

But what of my fellow passengers, what do they do to ease situations for people around them? One thing that infuriates me is the ‘despite the fact that there are no other seats free on this train and you are standing, I’m still going to put my bag/feet/guitar/Laptop etc on the seat so you can’t sit down’. One man actually tutted loudly at me for politely asking him to move his feet and when he did he kicked me hard in the shin to express his disgust. I don’t wish to be melodramatic but that kick hurt like crazy – I have since read that there is some sort of nerve in your shin that if kicked will generally make the person collapse due to the pain – so there, it hurt!

It’s like some people get onto the train and mark their territory, they invade the space provided and don’t allow other people to invade their space, like a virus – they set up home in their seat and it becomes theirs. Like a virus they are sneezed out at various different stations and resolve to make things more uncomfortable for people for asking them to move their bag.

I’ve found a way of preventing people from sitting anywhere near you that doesn’t involve creating a literal stink – gleaned from Jasper Carrott I believe – when people are getting on the train, as they pass you, smile as widely as you can. This, also like a virus, spreads throughout the train the general consensus that you’re probably going to engage them in some sort of conversation and you will more often than not be avoided at all costs.

I was looking forward to hopefully getting back to work in the near future and joining the commute again then I remembered the cold winter days, stuck in the snow, shivering waiting for the trsin. Or having the trains cancelled in summer as the rails are too hot. Perhaps I’ll just work from home :)