Friday, May 22, 2009
16.44 Eight Minutes Late.
I'm realising it's taken me all week to get over Monday night.
Which is maybe why I'm more crotchety than I have any right to be, given that it's a Friday afternoon, and a Bank Holiday Weekend.
Because, as I try to board the train, I'm disproportionately niggled by the pair, already ensconced, who have decided to pick this precise moment to remove their luggage from the rack and open it up, rooting about for something that has become suddenly vital, thus blocking the wave of commuters attempting to take their rightful place on the early train home.
Eventually they sense the disgruntlement eddying towards them and get out of the damn way. I'm able to bag a forward facing window seat and it looks as though I'm going to get it all to myself, until the last minute when ... she flumps down next to me again, immediately expanding over the divide. Our elbows, like knitting needles, engage furiously for a few seconds, then I concede and shrink away. I can't bear her intrusion. Or her perfume which is so cloying I can taste it. She cannot sit still, again. During the fifteen minute journey she searches her bag fifteen times.
As we leave the train I rescue the woman behind me who falls victim to the game of Oranges & Lemons the Pendolino plays daily and finds herself pinioned by the door, arms at her sides, unable to reach the button and free herself. If it'd been her I would have left her stuck there until Glasgow.
Sometimes I should rein in my inner curmudgeon.
I'm realising it's taken me all week to get over Monday night.
Which is maybe why I'm more crotchety than I have any right to be, given that it's a Friday afternoon, and a Bank Holiday Weekend.
Because, as I try to board the train, I'm disproportionately niggled by the pair, already ensconced, who have decided to pick this precise moment to remove their luggage from the rack and open it up, rooting about for something that has become suddenly vital, thus blocking the wave of commuters attempting to take their rightful place on the early train home.
Eventually they sense the disgruntlement eddying towards them and get out of the damn way. I'm able to bag a forward facing window seat and it looks as though I'm going to get it all to myself, until the last minute when ... she flumps down next to me again, immediately expanding over the divide. Our elbows, like knitting needles, engage furiously for a few seconds, then I concede and shrink away. I can't bear her intrusion. Or her perfume which is so cloying I can taste it. She cannot sit still, again. During the fifteen minute journey she searches her bag fifteen times.
As we leave the train I rescue the woman behind me who falls victim to the game of Oranges & Lemons the Pendolino plays daily and finds herself pinioned by the door, arms at her sides, unable to reach the button and free herself. If it'd been her I would have left her stuck there until Glasgow.
Sometimes I should rein in my inner curmudgeon.
The Bitter End - Placebo
Labels: train
