Travelling without a Guide

When I rushed onto the train yesterday afternoon, there was a feeling of "not quite school children" that I couldn't put my finger on. There wasn't a sea of uniforms, so it took me a while to work out that, from my seat, I was surrounded by a group of children & teens who belonged to a group & may well have been foreign. It's always hard to tell in Sydney, but I think they were either exchange students or else a school group on a tour. Ironically, their tour leader was a Pom.

The reason the feeling was "not quite school children" is that they weren't competing with each other. They weren't shouting, whinging, swearing, hitting each other, running up & down the carriage or in any way causing havoc. Admittedly, at one point, they were sharing music - to the point where one of them had a headphone hub that was dangling in the middle of the aisle, where three people (one in front & one behind me & one on the opposite side of the aisle) shared music. One of them was any asleep.

For all intents & purposes, they were school children, but they acted as if they were under control. I worked out who their leader was only by the fact that they occasionally asked him if he wanted to listen to something. There was also a leader who had come with them, but she didn't make her appearance felt until they got off the train - she was the last to leave, quickly checking seats for possessions left behind.

The interesting thing was the languidness with which they gathered their things to leave the train. The local (Pom) leader simply told them we were approaching the stop, & he would meet them at the door. When the train pulled in, many of them were still packing up, which is where their own leader started pushing them. The Pom stood outside, making sure that the guard understood that his group was large & slow, & he looked up at me through the train window with a bemused & apologetic look on his face.

As we pulled away from the platform, the guard made the announcement "For those who don't have a tour guide with them, the train will terminate at the next station - all out, all change."