Commuting with nature
It’s becoming obvious that commuters have not got the sense that God gave a goldfish and that their memory span must be about the same as that apocryphally attributed to that piscine pet.
I base this deduction on two incidences of observed behaviour.
First, the carriage crowd. This is the little knot of people that form on the platform at the point where, once the train has stopped, the carriage door will open. This allows them to spring lithely from platform to carriage and thence to seat, the better to spread their enormous, pale, office chair shaped arse cheeks onto a vacant seat rather than what must, given their imperative to do this, be the alternative – finding themselves standing at a point equidistant to two carriage doors and, unable to decide which one will offer the better chance of getting a seat, scuttling crab-like from side to side until the doors close leaving them on the platform in a lather of indecision.
It’s fascinating and alarming that the crowd can remember, every morning, at which point on the platform the carriage doors will open but cannot remember, every morning, that people will be wanting to get off the train.
If you are on the train and getting off at any station short of the train’s destination, you will be faced with a wall of people. It is the closest an unfamous person will ever get to exiting the stage door and finding a crowd there, except they don’t want either your autograph, or their money back, they just want to get on.
The carriage crowd are not, let me be clear, wholly without an understanding for the needs of the emerging passenger. They do grudgingly leave a gap narrow enough for you to pass through, if you can convert yourself into a stream of anorexic particles, or a Rizzla paper. Your alternatives are to slather yourself in Vaseline and apologetically slither your way out, or do what I do and stick your leg out and then follow it with the entire weight of your body, just like Indiana Jones does when he takes the ‘leap of faith’ in ‘Last Crusade’.
The second type of behaviour exhibited is when the carriage crowd try to get on an already full carriage. If you fill a glass with water, and then very very carefully slightly overfill it, then surface tension will mean that you can have a few micrometres of water above the level of the glass. That’s how full commuter carriages get, but that doesn’t stop people trying to join them.
This is achieved by two methods. The first is waiting until the breathing of everyone in the carriage is synchronised and everyone is breathing in, before flinging yourself on and hoping that the carriage doors shut before everyone breaths out and you are catapulted back onto the platform. If the doors close, you are mashed against the glass like the world’s ugliest Garfield doll but hey, at least you’ll be at your desk on time. The second is to bellow ‘can you move down please’ because fuck, yea, the people wallowing in all that prairie-like space wouldn’t think of doing that themselves.
What’s amazing is that nobody bellows back ‘no, can you not just get the next train?’ but instead everyone collectively shuffles a micron and makes room.
This is the twenty first century. Let’s put aside that by now, by rights, we should be commuting by jet pack. The commute should be relaxed, ideally completed sitting at a table while you are served a hot breakfast that concludes with a cigarette, coffee and an early morning digestif to take the edge off. At least, given the price of the fucking fares, that’s what I think commuters should be entitled to.
Perhaps the commuters are not to blame after all and what is happening here is the suppression of uncomfortable memories, but on a daily basis rather than those adults who can’t watch one of those clip shows about seventies television without getting an unexplained twinge in their bottom. It would explain an awful lot, starting with why they never think that getting an earlier train might be an idea.
I base this deduction on two incidences of observed behaviour.
First, the carriage crowd. This is the little knot of people that form on the platform at the point where, once the train has stopped, the carriage door will open. This allows them to spring lithely from platform to carriage and thence to seat, the better to spread their enormous, pale, office chair shaped arse cheeks onto a vacant seat rather than what must, given their imperative to do this, be the alternative – finding themselves standing at a point equidistant to two carriage doors and, unable to decide which one will offer the better chance of getting a seat, scuttling crab-like from side to side until the doors close leaving them on the platform in a lather of indecision.
It’s fascinating and alarming that the crowd can remember, every morning, at which point on the platform the carriage doors will open but cannot remember, every morning, that people will be wanting to get off the train.
If you are on the train and getting off at any station short of the train’s destination, you will be faced with a wall of people. It is the closest an unfamous person will ever get to exiting the stage door and finding a crowd there, except they don’t want either your autograph, or their money back, they just want to get on.
The carriage crowd are not, let me be clear, wholly without an understanding for the needs of the emerging passenger. They do grudgingly leave a gap narrow enough for you to pass through, if you can convert yourself into a stream of anorexic particles, or a Rizzla paper. Your alternatives are to slather yourself in Vaseline and apologetically slither your way out, or do what I do and stick your leg out and then follow it with the entire weight of your body, just like Indiana Jones does when he takes the ‘leap of faith’ in ‘Last Crusade’.
The second type of behaviour exhibited is when the carriage crowd try to get on an already full carriage. If you fill a glass with water, and then very very carefully slightly overfill it, then surface tension will mean that you can have a few micrometres of water above the level of the glass. That’s how full commuter carriages get, but that doesn’t stop people trying to join them.
This is achieved by two methods. The first is waiting until the breathing of everyone in the carriage is synchronised and everyone is breathing in, before flinging yourself on and hoping that the carriage doors shut before everyone breaths out and you are catapulted back onto the platform. If the doors close, you are mashed against the glass like the world’s ugliest Garfield doll but hey, at least you’ll be at your desk on time. The second is to bellow ‘can you move down please’ because fuck, yea, the people wallowing in all that prairie-like space wouldn’t think of doing that themselves.
What’s amazing is that nobody bellows back ‘no, can you not just get the next train?’ but instead everyone collectively shuffles a micron and makes room.
This is the twenty first century. Let’s put aside that by now, by rights, we should be commuting by jet pack. The commute should be relaxed, ideally completed sitting at a table while you are served a hot breakfast that concludes with a cigarette, coffee and an early morning digestif to take the edge off. At least, given the price of the fucking fares, that’s what I think commuters should be entitled to.
Perhaps the commuters are not to blame after all and what is happening here is the suppression of uncomfortable memories, but on a daily basis rather than those adults who can’t watch one of those clip shows about seventies television without getting an unexplained twinge in their bottom. It would explain an awful lot, starting with why they never think that getting an earlier train might be an idea.
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