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OK, first things first, I admit it, I
don't drive. That seems to make me some kind of alien
in the mind of the majority of the Great British Public,
but up til this last two years, it's just something
that hasn't appealed to me. Over the last 12 months
I've started the entire malarky of driving lessons,
had one test, failed it, and I'm going to get it all
sorted and passed as soonb as possible. In the meantime
- lucky me - I get to rely on public transport.
The thing is, every time I have to travel
anywhere other than Manchester (and sometimes even
while I'm in Manchester) it turns into a nightmare
- and normally right from the start.
If I'm using trains, which is the normal
method if I'm travelling any form of serious distance,
then the first thing that's got to be done is to buy
a ticket. Now, Railtrack have just spent some ridiculous
figure (somewhere around £20million) on refurbishing
the entire of Manchester's Piccadilly rail station
- and what do they leave as a ticket office? Five
counters - and if you see all five staffed at once,
you'd best nip outside and check for that squadron
of flying pigs. If I get the opportunity, I'll take
some pictures of the pox-ridden hole in the next couple
of days. If you're organised, and can buy tickets
before the day of travel, then you have to go to a
slightly different set of counters - equally understaffed,
but slightly different all the same - and try to communicate
with an alien life-form a member of the booking
staff.
Actually, on a minor tangent - if anyone
is ever in doubt about being able to communicate with
the dead, they should try talking to the staff in
the booking office at a train booking station. If
you need proof that aliens have in fact discovered
earth, try talking to the National Train Line on 08457
484950 - it's certainly something that qualifies as
an experience.
Anyway, I digress - but only briefly.
So, once you've explored the valley of the damned
ticket office you then have the next step into the
levels of transport hell - finding where the hell
the bloody train goes from. Now this is something
where the new Piccadilly Station has got it sussed
- they've put up a new board, which gives a dirty
great list of destinations, when the next train for
each of them goes, and where it goes from. Of course
this still seems to beyond the IQ of at least 90%
of passengers - why, I just don't know. I could understand
(OK, understand-ish, on my more charitable days, when
I'm not feeling homicidal based on IQ - another time
when squadrons of pigs do Red Arrows impressions)
not knowing what train you're supposed to be on when
all that's really displayed is the final destination.
(For example, if you're going from Manchester to Birmingham,
you can actually be on a train that ends up in Plymouth
or Bournemouth) But all the same, the list of destinations
is normally displayed on the monitors (which do normally
work) by the platfrom the train's departing from.
And yes, then we get onto my next best
loved part of travelling - the other passengers. In
a great number of cases, oh boy, you can see why they
don't drive. I doubt they can get past the theory
test - mystical choice questions, logical thought,
even reading seems to be beyond a lot of them. The
number of times I'll be sat on a train (particularly
when going through Birmingham, for some reason - I'm
sure not all Brummies are thick as shit, but my God,
do they go out of their way to prove me wrong) who
get on a train, and immediately start asking "Is
this the train for xyz?" - from where I'm sat,
I can see at least four monitors telling potential
passengers which train it is, and where it stops:
there's also the voice announcement going on, telling
every fucker on the station which train it is, and
where it's going, along with every single stopping
point along the way - and they'd all be able to hear
it, if they weren't braying "Is this the train
for xyz?" and drowning the bastard thing out.
At the same time, everyone is getting onto the train
(sometimes while other people are still trying to
get out through the same doors - Logic isn't a high
point in train travellers) and blocking up the entrances
to the carriages, trying to put cases away, never
remembering about the rack in the middle which is
a shitload closer to where they're going to be sitting
- and then they make their way to their seats - except
they then still stand in the aisle, trying to get
out the book they want or whatever from their rucksacks
instead of sitting the fuck down, and getting the
fuck out of the way of the other people who are still
trying to move through the train, finding a seat,
dragging bags down the ultra-narrow passage way between
seats,
By my very rough reckoning, it takes a
good quarter of an hour after every single station
for the passengers to sort themselves out. It's an
unbelievable farce, total comedy for the cynical among
us (yeah, OK, me) to sit and watch, with the occasional
head-shake of despair at people.
And of course getting off the train is
the same farce, only in reverse. Despite the announcements
through the (normally shit) train intercom, people
never seem to be prepared for their station to appear.
It's not like the fucking conductor (or whatever they're
called these days - I don't pay that much attention
myself. Then again, I don't need to listen all that
much - I know where I'm going, after all) doesn't
read out the entire bastard list of destinations at
every stop, tell people what the next stop will be,
or warn them five to ten minutes before the train
gets to the station. So how everyone seems to not
know where they are is completely beyond me, to be
honest. But the train pulls into the station, half
the carriage waits to see what the sign says for the
station, then try to stand up and dash for their bags,
trying to fight through the people who were more prepared,
and are already sorted and waiting to get out the
damn doors.
In conclusion, I think it's also worth
remembering that the seats on most of the long-distance
(well, long-distance for the UK) trains are smaller
than the ones in economy flights, yet you can be sat
on a train for as long as it takes an airliner to
get from the UK to the US, South America, or India.
I wonder how long it will be until we start noticing
the problems of deep vein thrombosis happen during
train travel too...
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