Train etiquette part deux.

Following on from my post on train etiquette here I genuinely thought that I'd covered almost every eventuality and addressed the best approach to selecting the most appropriate carriage/seat etc. You might even think that I'd mastered the art of sensible seat selection? well, if this afternoon's journey was anything to go by it's essential that you do not follow my lead.

As I trudged past the carriages closet to the station, with a smirk on my face armed with the assumption that most people are lazy and board the train at the nearest carriage, imagine my shock as I stepped on to the last carriage to discover it was nearly full! Very nearly, but not quite, so I positioned myself in one of the two vacant spaces, the smugness rising again as I celebrated the fact that I had two spaces to myself. My joy was short-lived as a massive man with both a noisy newspaper and an imaginary friend (he was chatting away to himself) clunked down next to me. Great, not only was he massive (code for arm rest stealer) he was deranged and I was about to spend the next 2 hours fearing for my life. Thankfully it turned out he wasn't deranged and instead had one of those ear piece things in so I revelled in the fact I was not about to be killed.

My delight did not last long, he continued to chatter away to what must have been his wife/mistress (he wore a ring but you can never be too sure) in what I can only assume he thought was a whisper. A whisper it was not and when the conversation took a turn I can only describe as pornographic I had to implement my best skills of distraction, I was already trying to compose a power point presentation but I had to start singing in my head as I tried to  block out his attempted hushed chat which seemed to be focused around the topic of spanking! Yup. Freaked out I continued to type away as he continued to hit patch of no reception, call back, lose connection, call back, lose reception...for 2 hours!

The moral of this story is if you see me on a train, do not sit near me, I attract a peculiar sort. I didn't move because there was nowhere else to sit, otherwise I would have definitely employed that tactic....I cannot promise that this is the end of my train tales as for the next two weeks I'm up and down the country like a yo yo so watch this space.

In summary:
When the person sat next to you starts talking filth, to you or even on the phone...move...unless you need to work and there's nowhere else to sit in which case you could politely ask that they stop talking filth but be prepared that they might try and kill you. Hopefully not, but there's always a risk.

xo.