What's the Rush?

A word about train journeys. When you think of it, it is quite a funny concept. There are so and so many people from all walks of life stuck in the same moving worm, or fish womb if you like (modern Jonah, realise?), with nothing in common but the same direction in which they are going that time and day. And apart from the regular noisy children (I love children), stinking food, and snoring old men you do get some weird characters every once in a while.

Like that conductor on the train to Bath the other day, who was very aware of it being his 32th wedding anniversary that day, and who made sure everyone else knew as well. Well, actually that wasn't very weird, just adorable. He must have a very happy wife. In his best of moods, he asked for my railcard. His response when I hold it under his nose: "Smashing!"
He then tried to clear the way for someone with a LOT of luggage: "Watch your legs, please. I mean, don't literally watch your legs."
Next, he asked for tickets from Cheltenham. "Anyone who's got one of those, show them and you might potentially win a prize!" He was lovely.

On the way back, however, things changed. Good facts first: no one ate horrible stinking food; I wasn't thrown out of the train; I even had a seat.
BUT so did those football fans. Nothing wrong with football fans. It's just, they had a massive provision of beer (and stuff). You could probably have worked the train engine with that if it had failed midway. But the train went as smoothly as a spaceship, which left them with all these litres (or pints rather) of beer to consume.
So, the nearer we came to Leeds, the merrier they got, with little intervals of, let's call it, discord, which led them to drive some of their party out of the train.
Now, I find football fans in England slightly more amusing than in Germany, but mainly because I tend to prefer English things to German things in general at the moment, I suppose.
At first they discussed the match at length. Then, they found someone's music a little bit disturbing (not that it was any louder than their palaver), but they tried to make them aware by dancing to it. (intended meaning: "Icanhearyourmusicitssoloud evenIoutsideofyourheadphoneworldcanhearitswitchitoff!") It didn't work, so they tried it a bit more directly. To be honest, at that stage I wouldn't have wanted to mess with them, but the person was brave enough to resist. Fortunately not much later those football fans were so drunk they seemed to not notice anymore. They were obviously supporters of Leeds, but weren't quite sure of themselves anymore. "Did we win?" was one of their brilliant but very earnest questions. They then looked for clues of what they were doing and where they just came from, and decided that cheering was a crucial part of that business, so they started to cheer for the names of the stations we passed through.
Other passengers were either very amused or very upset. The upset part had to sort out problems for themselves, anyway. They argued away about VERY private matters, well yeah, where else than in a fully booked out train would you want to discuss such things. I do hope that girl who got out in Sheffield will sort things out with her flatmate, as she really wants to spend more time with Phil and Chris always gets jealous, and I suppose, we've all been there at some point.

I wouldn't normally be quite so accurate in my observations, as I tend to get absorbed in some book, but due to a cancellation it was rather late and I couldn't concentrate on anything other than my inner train rant which I now got off my chest.

We all get where we wanted to be eventually. And to conclude with the words of those dedicated Leeds supporters (in despise): "This train wins!"