Without getting into jokes about mixing up my sleeping arrangements & bodily functions, let's just say I won't make a habit of it.
I had thought I was generally an early riser - I get a pre-peak discount, & I'm one of the first in the office. That qualifies me for a level of smugness.
That level has been diminished by sharing the experience of regularly earlier risers.
Waiting on the platform in the cold, I realised that I wouldn't be getting my usual choice seat (where you don't have to worry about someone sitting next to you), as there were so many people lined up where they knew the doors would be, & I just don't have that killer instinct (in the morning, at least), or indeed the desire to measure out where the doors should be at that time of the day.
When the train arrived, I casually joined the back of the throng that wanted to push through the opening doors - asserting their authority for having stood in the same place for however-many years (to the millimetre) - & I found a seat somewhere in the middle of the carriage.
Then I started to look around.
It was too obvious to miss, & I should have seen it before boarding.
This train was going to be full of people whose jobs require them to wear high-viz shirts or vests - of either colour.
You're thinking "So what?" (I can tell.)
The intriguing thing is that, an hour later, the two or three high-viz wearers in my usual carriage truly stand out.
In this carriage, I was the anomaly for not drawing attention to myself (by wearing a standard-issue dark overcoat).
You could say that's ironic (& you'd probably be right, because I'm not even intending to be humorous).
You could say that's defeatist & I should just try harder.
You could say that's bringing the reader too much into the conversation & possibly off track, which is probably the point of these posts anyway.
Let's face it, a post on the track would definitely derail someone's train of thought.
Where on earth were all of these people going?
Well, for one thing, they were going somewhere accessible by public transport, which narrows things down somewhat.
I began to speculate.
I know one minor industrial estate a few stations along.
When no-one got off, I thought that people might change trains a few stations farther on & head off to other industrial estates.
When that didn't pan out, I thought they might change trains to go to some of the stations this train skips.
When that also didn't seem to be the case, I simply sat back & forced myself to stop pointless speculation (leaving such to the time of writing).
Half a carriage worth of travellers (& very few more high-viz wearers joined us) were headed effectively to the airport or the city.
When you think about it, the former makes some sense, but the latter jars with my sensibilities - until I began to question my own prejudices.
- The city has a lot of construction - whether its infrastructure or high-rise, there are a lot of people on those sites who must wear high-viz.
- Not everyone in high-viz is being held up by a shovel.
- High-viz is worn under any circumstance where you think that the people around you cannot distinguish you from the background.
Many of these jobs require admirable skills & experience.
Admittedly, it's possible that quite a few of my travelling companions were not executives, & that professionals in high-viz are as likely to wear light-weight "on site" vests that they carry in a brief case, but I had simply made an assumption that anyone getting on the train that early in high-viz was going to a factory to box chickens or sex light globes or some such quite menial & mindless task.
I hereby apologise for imposing both my presence & my prejudice on the hard-working, early-rising, high-viz accoutred train travellers who never gave me a second thought on the day, because I must have been effectively invisible.
