The Bleatings of Sheep

No day would be complete without the journey home's perusal of MX - the free newspaper for commuters. This recharges me with its puzzle page, amuses me with its reader contributions, & occasionally even informs me somewhere else - if only for the way that people think or need to be communicated at when there is no loyalty associated with the readership.

The "Vent Your Spleen" section is about third on my list of activities. We are talking about an audience of public transport sufferers, so a lot of the entries are around those who are a little anti-social. The rest of the entries are spiteful little wars of words that become humorous only after you realise how far they must have gone from the original topic.

As much as I love the Vents, it goes back to that old adage - "Everyone talks about the weather ..." - which I try to live by. Having said that, I try to do something about the things that annoy me on public transport.
Here is my list of fun things to do:

• hold back in the vestibule of the train as you approach your station, then slip through the little old ladies who had front position so that you can run down the stairs & away quickly - never get caught behind them, because their first instinct when getting off the train is to ask someone where they are
• when you're the only one getting off, make sure you position yourself so that you walk into anyone trying to board the train ahead of anyone else, preferably waiting to see which way they'll head & walking straight into them; then glare at them
• carry an umbrella with a pointy end on a rainy day, & fling its tip forward as you exit the train
• always excuse yourself loudly before clambering over someone sitting at the aisle
• likewise before kicking someone sitting on the stairs
• if someone is standing just inside the door but not getting off, take them with you
• if a school child leaves their bag on the floor in the vestibule, kick it, trip over it, drag it with you out the door
• offer to help any mother with a stroller by pushing through those who wouldn't help
• if a pregnant or elderly or limping person is standing, offer your seat quickest if you have the window
• wearing heavy boots & running down stairs two at a time gets people out of your way

If you see something that annoys you, always think of what it is that annoys you & how you would do something less annoying if you could - then do that. Soon, there's nothing left to be annoyed at, because that emotion comes from a sense of powerlessness, which is something a commuter should never feel.

Red Rattlers

Very few of my readers - which is a small percentage of nothing, I fear - would know what a "red rattler" was.

When I were a lad ... seriously, I'm talking about my teenage years ... there were trains that my father (who never caught trains) would refer to as "red rattlers". These were the trains left over from his youth. They had windows that, if they opened at all, slid down from the top (like school rooms of the day), had seats that were unlikely to be reversible - if the seat back was still attached, & doors that didn't close. I kid you not. I can even remember a friend of mine, as we pulled out of the station, jumping off such a train with the cry "I don't want this train!". He'd forgotten that he was meant to meet his mother to get a haircut after school. He got a broken ankle & cuts & grazes up & down his body instead. The police rang me that afternoon to ascertain that he hadn't been pushed.

One more thing - these trains were red. They also rattled terribly.

I was thinking of these trains fondly when I turned up at the station to discover that my train had windows that open. There aren't many left, but there are still a few suburban trains that not only precede the time of air conditioning, but are so old that nobody bothered to retrofit them & then glue the windows closed. These trains were almost definitely around in the 1980s or '90s. I would have thought of them as "new". Their trendy one-piece seats would have seemed almost space-age in their construction (but not vandal proof, alas).

I sat in this train, listening to my guard stumbling through the list of stops (without his electronic helper), & wondered how I might look upon those trains that we currently see as the latest technology, in another twenty years.

I mean, a train is a train - they're still two stories with vestibules (red rattlers were single level), three seats on one side, two on the other. That's a Sydney train blue-print from way back. A cryogenically-frozen blind person from the 90s could find their way onto & through a modern carriage. Actually, I think that's where the drivers come from ...

We are creatures of habit. Our rail service is a creature of habit. For all the changes of department name or bureaucracy, government, financial situation, network expansion, or technology, a train is still a tin tube of commuters rattling along two tracks; & that's the way we like it.