Chavtastica
No 2. in a no doubt increasingly frequent series of rants concerning the fun we all had with rail transport.
Imagine the scenario: you are journeying from Newcastle Central Station to Cheadle Hulme. This necessitates being up at around ten past six in the morning, to catch the twenty past seven train…
…which gets you in to York at four minutes past eight…
…where you catch the train to Manchester Picadilly at twenty past eight…
…which gets you into Manchester at about ten to ten, where you catch the train to Cheadle Hulme at about five past ten…
…finally getting you into Cheadle Hulme at about twenty past ten.
Or at least, that’s how it works in theory. Last time, it contained a lot more swearing.
In all fairness, most days it does work like it does in theory. And also in all fairness, the problem I encountered this time wasn’t caused by anyone to do with the rail companies (at least, assuming that they weren’t lying).
No, as the train pulled into Huddersfield, we were told “there will be a slight delay here at Huddersfield, there is a signalling failure at Manchester and they are currently unable to process any trains.”
Fair enough. We’re on schedule. Five or ten minutes won’t hurt.
But in five minutes, the announcer is back on to inform us that the we might as well get off the train and stretch our legs: it will be a considerable delay as they have had a power cut at Manchester Picadilly for the last hour and there’s no sign of it going on yet.
No disrespect intended to Huddersfield, but it’s railway station isn’t some place I would have planned on waiting around on for an hour or so.
But after ten minutes, we were told that the train in front of us (crammed on the same platform) was going to Manchester Victoria, and we should get on that one, and then transfer from Victoria to Picadilly when we got to Manchester.
Only this was one of the trains that stops at every tuppence-ha’penny station (”two-bit” for you American readers), usually only about 800 yards apart. Not only that but it had two trains-worth of people on it, so I had given up a nice comfy seat in order to be squashed in a doorway with a dozen other people.
And there was a really pleasant young lady trying to get on behind me, asking:
Will you FUCKING move out of my FUCKING way and get in the carriage — I’m sorry to be rude — but FUCKING MOVE IN, I’m trying to get on”Pleasantly-brought up young lady 1
Of course, what she seemed oblivious to was the fact that the hold up was caused by people (quite reasonably in my opinion) wanting to place their luggage in … the luggage rack … and obviously holding her up. However, as she didn’t have any luggage — or manners, come to think of it — this was not sufficient reason in her opinion for them to hold her up.
And then after getting on, she said something along the lines of that she knew she could get aggressive from time to time but she’d found that being aggressive got things done. Possibly someone who could benefit from looking up the difference between ‘assertive’ and ‘aggressive’?
And then someone official-looking came along and said that the first train was going to Manchester Picadilly now after all — so could we please all get back off the second train and get back onto the train we were on in the first place. Again.
Again, by this time seemingly even more people wanted to get on the train — it was even busier than the second one — and so again I was crammed into the vestibule with about fourteen other people.
Next we had a young woman who was determined to find a seat for her elderly and (not obviously) disabled mother. Now, in my opinion this could have been achieved quite reasonably by simply asking one of the people who was sat down:
I’m terribly sorry, would you mind letting my mother have your seat? She’s elderly and disabled?What she could have said
I imagine most people, if asked directly and politely like this, would have gladly offered their seats. However, while what she said — eventually — achieved the same effect, it had the impact of causing low-grade aggravation and resentment to pretty much everyone in the carriage — including her mother, who asked her to stop.
It’s all right mother. You can stand up. It doesn’t matter that you’re OLD and DISABLED, because none of these young BASTARDS are willing to give up their seat for you, you can just STAND because they are all INCONSIDERATE BASTARDSWhat she did say
Yes, I can understand her frustration. But everyone else was also feeling cramped and frazzled and had — for the most part at least — managed to remain polite and friendly to their fellow passengers. (I was stood up, by the way!)
Of course, I’m only polite to their face; I’ll quite happily bitch about them behind their back on my blog. But I never claimed to be perfect either! (Or rather, I did, but I didn’t expect anyone to believe me.)
And then, like a glorious vision of chavviness, came the two young women. Let me attempt to describe them.
They were both youngish: I’d say one was late teens, the other was early twenties. Each had a child in a pushchair.
An aside here: I don’t have anything against young mothers. I don’t have anything against people bringing their children on the trains: I have children and I know that they can be problematic at times. The children weren’t the problem.
…except for the fact that they appeared to be called Kyle and …Britney.
All I can say is that it’s a good job my parents didn’t practice the same naming method otherwise I would have probably been called ‘Ziggy Stardust’ or something… or possibly even ‘Mungo Jerry’.
So anyway, these mothers were wearing those ’strappy’ tops, they both had their hair back in ponytails with multiple scrunchies, both of them had their mobile phones permanently in their hands and then…
…decided to start playing some music. Not to the kids, who were quite happy. Not to themselves, either. No, they specifically took the headphones out of the phone so the entire carriage could listen to their dance music.
Which they then started to sing along to. Except obviously they only knew about three words in each verse which would be belted out, accompanied by a hip shuffle.
This was interrupted only by the occassional “put that fucking drink down, Britney, you’re making me miss my song… and you’re fucking spilling it” as the poor two year old attempted to get herself a drink from the juice cup that was stored underneath her pushchair.
…and this continued for the forty minutes or so of chronological time (sixteen years of subjective time) that it took for us to pull into Manchester Picadilly.
I don’t wish to demonise young mothers. I’ve known people who were young mothers who looked after their children first, who were considerate of other people second and then put themselves third (at highest). And I’ve known them do a very good job at being a mother.
But people who treat their child somewhere between a fashion accessory and an inconvenience … whilst showing a complete lack of consideration for everyone else. Well, those people I am quite happy to demonise.
So to those people who innocently asked ‘how was your journey?’ and were met with a glare followed by some under-breath muttering, I’m sorry. But now you know why…
Hello. I am 
