Observations on the train...

My friend Paula told me to write these down as I usually share them every morning as I stagger into the office with yet another tale of weirdness, rudeness, smelliness or some other 'ness on my journey to work. The journey only takes 10-15 minutes but it is almost always eventful and not all of these stories are from my commute between Lewisham and London Bridge, a few are from other commutes in or out of London that I remember.

Titanic in Essex

I was standing next to 2 office girls one morning at the time Titanic was in the cinema and very popular. The girls were asking each other about their weekends. Girl 1 "What did you do at the weekend?" Girl 2 "I went to see a movie" Girl 1 "What did you see?" Girl 2 "Titanic innit", Girl 1 "What’s it about" Girl 2 "It’s a love story set on some big boat"... I started to laugh at this, "some boat" only the most famous boat of all time. I love the simplicity of Essex girls. 

Make up girls

This doesn't happen so often on the train but when it does, it puzzles me. 2 girls doing their make up on a moving and shaking train. Why? They were young and had applied enough foundation to build the Empire State Building on. There was so much of it that it was impossible to tell what ethnicity the 2 of them originally were. I don't know what race of people are orange with blue eye liner? Oompa Loompers perhaps? They even took photos of each other with their phones to send to their "lucky" boyfriends who were waiting for them in Gillingham. 

2 Fat ladies

On a recent train journey on a very crowded train I was sandwiched between 2 very large ladies. I held on to the rail and tried not to breathe too hard or move in case I stumbled or fell onto one of them. One of the ladies was clearly a very happy and friendly lady; she smiled at me and gave that look of shared discomfort at being on such a crowded train. The other lady was an ogre. She elbowed me twice which I ignored, then she said I was squashing her and leaning on her. I smiled and said nothing. Then she did it again at which I said at the top of my voice "If you weren't so damn fat I wouldn't be leaning on you or touching you", she then sucked her teeth and sassed me and said she wasn't bothered at which I looked her up and down and said "Clearly". Not my finest moment, nor hers. But the other people around us smiled at me or winked as I had probably said what they were thinking. I hope so.

Very angry man

Most mornings the trains are standing room only and you are usually pressed against your fellow passengers, it isn’t a nice experience and if it weren’t for my music, I would probably have lost my temper a few times and almost did last week. I am not a tall person and the man standing next to me was very tall and insisted on having his elbow in my face, almost touching my nose. I moved slightly to avoid it hitting me in the eye and he moved in sync with me. So I asked him nicely to move his elbow out of my face. He responded by repeating the word “what” over and over and when we went round a corner, his elbow bashed me in the head. London commuting seems to make people extra angry!?

I eat dog food?

Personal smells are varied and usually you switch off to them, BO is ever present on a commuter train and not everyone on the train knows how or where to buy deodorant, shame on them. But dog food breath man has to be the best. A very fit looking man, he boarded the train with his full size adult racing bike, this was bad enough, the train was so full people were hanging out of the windows (almost), he asked people to move down and people tried but it was more of a crush than the front at a One Direction concert. He settled in next to me and faced me with his Lycra shorts and muscles then he breathed on me. I would have fainted if I had not been pinned to the train wall by his bike. I’ve had dogs as pets, as do some of my friends and my grandfather did so I know what dog food smells like, and boy did I get a blast of it from Mr Racing Bike man. I cannot tell you if it was gourmet or store brand dog food but it smelled as if it had gone off. Vile and you would not expect a man so healthy appearing to have breath that could have immobilized most of the carriage.

I love this sketch, Calvin & Hobbes are funny in any language!

There will be more stories and I hope not all of them will be bad? I fell in love on a train once, in Vietnam in 2011 and maybe I will again but somehow I doubt it will happen on the 8:56 to London Bridge.

Sean Usher

May 18, 2013