Glamour of train travel

Nothing glamorous about train travel. I am already tired when I get on the train going North; I needed to change in Darlington, the train was late, the wind chilled me to the bone, there was no access to the coffee stand so I'm stuck with my tea getting colder in the massive cup, and with an unappealing chicken salad sandwich in plastic which I am having second thoughts about. I get on, the the dance of the seats begins. I have a window seat by a table, and it is occupied by a large package of some sort, wrapped in bubblewrap. I turn to the woman sitting next to it, who jerks her head up rapidly and looks at me with anger and contempt. It's not her package, she's in her own seat. The package belongs to the Asian girl in the seat opposite, who struggles to pick it up, and bumps into the man sitting next to her, on the isle side. Confusion; I wait with my bags uncfomfortably wedged into a single seat, trying to let other passengers go through. The woman 'sitting in her own seat' is plugged into a DVD player and does not take the earphones out, or stop the film, in spite of having gotten up. She continues to stand there, blocking the passage, waiting for me to get seated, looking annoyed. When she speaks it's with a loud voice of someone whose ears are blocked. The Asian girl squeezes past me, swearing under her breath as she tries to find a space for her package.

Finally we are all settled, and the train departs. I open my uninspiring sandwich with a squeak of tortured plastic, and the sound makes the woman next to me grimace. I eat guiltily as she exhales the air of contempt. The Asian girl in front of me settles down too, and focuses hard on the screen of her black Apple. She is working, she has deadlines, she is stressed. The small man next to her, with wispy blond hair, tanned, wrinkled face and a tight blue t-shirt, is plugged in as well. A silvery MP3 player hangs from a pink band around his neck. Looking down his thin nose, into space, he is silent. But occasionally he will emit a high hum, as he tries and fails to contain himself and starts singing to the music. They are less hums, in fact, and more like the sounds people make in their sleep, half-comprehensible, a-melodic, decontextualised. Suddenly he bursts into song for a second – 'Daddy's coming home', and than goes silent again, and sighs deeply. The Asian girl next to him does her best not to flinch.

Staring with large, blue eyes, completely round. It is nearly like listening to a Pythian prophecy, 'Slow down', he says suddenly, 'How are you..?' and you feel drawn to interpret these random words, random phrases, give them some sort of meaning. It's like Chinese water torture. After a while you start to relax, you manage to concentrate, and then a burst of song, or a low wail, or a single word, loud and clear, comes out of the man's mouth, and jerks you back into tension. By the end of the journey my muscles are so tired, as if I had been wrestling with him the whole time, but it's only from wrestling with myself as I fight to stop myself from strangling him.

It may be that I'm tired, or maybe it's a typical side-effect of reading D. H. Lawrence, but I find the whole set-up unbearable. The passengers faking disinterest in the proceedings of others, while in fact wallowing in nosiness. Overhearing other people's conversations, being forced to listen to their mobile phone exchanges. And in the row further don a tall, grey-haired man in khakis and a brown jacket, with an elegant, slightly crumples appearance, keeps looking over to our table, taking sudden interest with the spilling of yoghurt, a vulgar interest which contrasts so sharply with his intellectual appearance. His companion wears a bright pink shawl and a bright pink lipstick, and they exchange opinions in measured, calm tones, hardly looking at one another, detached and aloof, like people who know one another too well and can hardly contain indifference and contempt. The fact that I have to inhale coughed-up air makes me feel grimy. My God, would they stop coughing, I can smell what they've had for breakfast, and for dinner the night before, it's oppressive. I hold my breath in automatic dread and disgust. The pettiness of it all, as we strive to pretend we're alone while in fact we're surrounded and closed in a small, horrid space until the end of the journey. No escaping.

I feel a bit better when I catch a glance of the Angel of the North up on the bank, and then, after a while, is the sea. Not long now.