Train of Fools

I am often gobsmacked at the behaviour on the trains I am now travelling as a big city commuter. I'm certainly not in Kansas any more l'il girl. My lines are mostly Glen Waverley and Hurstbridge and occasionally Pakenham and Craigieburn. While the lyrical names of the passing suburbs never ceases to bring a smile to my face, and the now familiar beauty of the scenery pleases my soul, the interior of the carriages often disturbs. Sarah once had a whole day ruined by sitting on a piece of chewing gum stuck to a tram seat and at the time I laughed. Who's laughing now though, certainly not me. Eating and making a mess in the enclosed space of public transport is commonplace and disgusting. Call me old fashioned but I believe that there should still be places in this world where it is not culturally acceptable to eat. Have we become so dependent on food that we cannot wait twenty minutes or so to stuff our faces? Or do we need to slow our lives down to allow time to eat properly? It can't be good for anyone's system to scoff stinky fast food from a paper bag on a jiggling train. I know it's not good for mine to witness it.

But it's not necessarily the state of the trains I am talking about here though they are not obviously pleasant but the way the passengers treat each other and their temporary environment. Here's a tip, don't even think about catching a train on a Saturday afternoon around the time of an AFL game unless you like the smell of vomit or watching a trail of piss slowly trickle down the aisle towards your feet. I kid ye not, I got on a full-ish train once and wondered why there were some empty seats up one end. Discovered why when the smell reached my nostrils. The 20mins to Ivanhoe never went so slowly. Mind you, yours truly has been guilty of having a discreet puke into a library membership bag when a migraine struck on my first day at work. Trapped on a train knowing that I would be better getting to somewhere I could safely pass out rather than get off in the middle of nowhere , there was no stopping the chuck when it knocked at the door. Hoo-boy the motion of the not so smooth tracks did not help much.

Anyway, in the morning between Hurstbridge and the city a full train is expected. Apart from the lovely names of the suburbs, it is by far the worst line. They desperately need more trains running because the Epping and Hurstbridge services share a track north from the city to Clifton Hill then split. This means that at ten minute intervals leaving Flinders Street mine only runs every second time. You really don't want to miss it then if the next one will be along in – oh only twenty minutes if you're lucky and its not late. I spend my life waiting for late trains, trams and buses at the moment. There's the time to be eating!

Sometimes enjoying the ride though is a real stretch of the Pollyanna 'glad game'. It's raining this morning so already everything is unpleasantly wet and steamy on board. Today's Glen Waverley vehicle is an ancient dunger of a carriage with graffiti on every surface, vertical and horizontal. Jaggered indecipherable letters are scratched into the windows, penned in black on the walls, floor and even the distinctive blue geometrically patterned seats. I share the morning train with the kids from St Kevin's College. Their not bad dressed in the crest embossed blazers and striped ties but they are typical teenage boys, popping gum, talking about girls and swearing. However I much prefer their irritating adolescence to the Broadie Bogans on the Craigieburn and the middle class suburban young Rebels without a Clue on the Hurstbridge.

The Hurstbridge youth are utterly appalling. Cheap imitations of Paris Hilton with screechingly loud Down Under twangs at its almost worst, tits and bits hanging out of teensy outfits that cost more per square inch of fabric than the national debt of Japan. And the boys are just as bad. Drunk and obnoxious at ten on a Sunday morning they look about twelve to me and no matter what they think...THEY ARE NOT FUNNY...not even in a pitiful way! Put these two sexes together, add a year of maturity and what do you get?! A self-absorbed young couple glued together with suction sound effects all the way to Heidelberg. “It's another full tram guys, excuse me,” I want to say, “but it is really uncomfortable for the people sitting next to you to be elbowed by limbs greedy to be fondling each other.” But of course I don't because the most adhered to unspoken rule of train travel is that you never react to the other beings around you. Stare straight ahead and ignore whatever is going on. Eavesdropping is permitted and if you don't have small buds of music connected by dental floss to your pocket attached to your ears, positively unavoidable however under no circumstances must you react. Getting involved is worse by a thousand times than the obnoxious behaviour and that is because everyone is afraid that speaking up won't make the situation better or go away, it will only make it unbearably worse. What have we become?