Apologies, a techy oik and a close call with involuntary initmacy

As we made our way to the platform we were once again engulfed by a lumpen mass of teenagers absorbed in their hand held screens.

They trudged towards us like automatons drudging their way up the staircase oblivious of any convention to keep to the left. We had to sidestep them at least once to our left but could go no further as we were pressing ourselves against the banister already.

While we were waiting for the train Heather settled our regular dispute about who gets the window seat. She held out both her hands and asked me to pick the one with the coin in it. If I chose right I won the window seat. I pointed to one of her hands which she opened. It was empty. I lost and was going to have to sit in the aisle seat for three or four hours. Oh well.

We found our designated coach and our reserved seats. Considering Brockenhurst was only the first stop since the train started in Bournemouth this reserved coach was nearly full.

Just a bit of travel advice for any would be Cross Country train passengers. If the train you are on is at the start of its journey use the loo. Even if you haven’t got any urges or subliminal pangs force yourself and evacuate any bodily reservoirs of waste products as soon as possible. Trust me, it does not take too many stops and juddering junctions before the floor becomes awash with suspicious liquids trying to soak into carelessly discarded bits of toilet tissue.

Heather headed off with great purpose but got pipped to her objective by a rather large man. The red light on a bulkhead came on indicating the toilet was in use. Five minutes later the red light was still glowing.

“He’s taking ages.”

“Do you think he’s a fare dodger?”

“I think I know what’s going on in there.”

He emerged and returned to his seat.

“Here goes. Are you sure you don’t want to go first?” Heather asked

When she came back to our seats Heather looked slightly perturbed.

“They should have another lit up sign along the lines of ‘Best left for ten minutes’ or something like that.”

Our coach hit capacity at Southampton Airport Parkway. New passengers shuffled along the aisle. With their luggage they to keep some semblance of personal balance and read the overhead displays showing the reservations.

“Excuse me but I have that seat booked” bounced around the carriage. Apologies were said and more shuffling of people and luggage took place.

In front of us was a table with four seats around. The “Excuse me” comment was uttered followed by an apology from a lady with a voice like Cher.

“I am so sorry” she said as she stood up and collected her things from the overhead luggage rack

All was fine and settled apart from one annoying disturbance taking place three or four seats away. A twenty something geeky type oik started a phone conversation about computers. It was a conversation that the whole carriage heard half of. We heard that his laptop didn’t have enough capacity for some new software. He was adamant that “Ollie” at the other end of the call should not touch anything on his laptop until he got to the office. The other recurring topic was how the connection kept breaking and how useless the internet was. Well, it would be affected as we went through a couple of tunnels wouldn’t it?

At Reading there was another churn of passengers. The lady with the voice like Cher worked her way back to the table near us.

“Oh darling, how nice you’ve come back. We were just talking about holidays. Have you been away yet this year?”

“We went to the Seychelles in January. Have you been away yet?”

“Well as you already know I’m single now and the kids are all away at uni at the exes expense so I went to India for a few weeks. Marvellous time there. You know? Just like that Marigold Hotel with Bill Nighy and Judi Dench. Marvellous. Do you know, I was assigned a boy at the hotel each day and his job was to look after me. Sorted out a space on the beach, got drinks, booked dinner and everything. Marvellous. They are so relaxed out there. Definitely thinking about living there.”

“You’re relatively young, probably quite healthy. I’ll bet if you got really ill or injured out there you’d be coming straight back here to the UK and throw yourself on the floor of the most convenient NHS accident and emergency department near Heathrow or Gatwick insisting on treatment.”

No of course not. I didn’t say this but I was thinking it.

At Oxford there was a huge churn of passengers. There was also an audible and collective sigh of relief around the carriage when the geeky oik stood up and got off.

A new passenger came to the table in front of us.

“Excuse me, could I have my seat please? I have a reservation.”

The lady with the voice like Cher apologised, stood up, collected her belongings and shuffled off to another part of the carriage. The gentleman who had booked the seat she was using got off at Coventry and she returned.

“Hello darling. So nice to see you again. Now what were we talking about? Oh yes, I remember, India.”

As I was sitting in the aisle seat I was the one who became the unintended target for shoulder bags,, large handbags, satchels and suitcases. That was bad enough but worse was to come. At Birmingham New Street a rather large lady stood up from the seat across from me. Honestly, she was so large it felt like all light, both artificial and natural, had been eclipsed and her backside invaded my personal space almost to the point of involuntary intimacy.

The next stop after Birmingham New Street was ours, Wolverhampton.

We gathered our bags, collected our one suitcase from the luggage rack and made our way into the overcrowded lobby where the toilet cubicle was and waited. God knows what state it was in now as I had seen the train manager work his way towards it with a mop during our journey. Next to me was an Asian couple who were speaking in what I thought was their own language. interspersed with English words such as "market", "nightclub" and "dinner". It was just before the train stopped at Wolverhampton that I realised they were speaking in English which was disguised by their strong local accents.

The train stopped and everyone in the lobby got off – Wolverhampton we had arrived.