(In a pre-tablet world, travelling on a train, I tried to write an e.mail to a friend with my then-new gadget; a little 'netbook'. It proved hilariously difficult. I reproduce this extract as a memory of another Saturday, in another life before we had to keep two metres apart from each other. ENJOY! by Liz Obadina)
https://medium.com/@elizabethmaryobadina/once-upon-a-time-before-social-distancing-a-welsh-journey-c4f4d777fca1
Saturday 9th April 2011
Dear …
Thanks
to my new toy I can enjoy typing this comfortably whilst on the move. I’ll send
it when I get back.
The train
I’m on is the 9.23am Milford Haven to Manchester Arriva toodle-along two
carriage affair. It’s going to be a four hour journey and the carriages are
heaving. Most passengers are women and it feels like – indeed probably is the
biggest hen party out ever. There are some very strange outfits,
tiaras and wands. It’s raucous and a lot of it’s in Welsh. I’m wondering how far most
people are travelling – probably Cardiff
– another hour and a half... We’ve just left Carmarthen which took us alongside
the seashore but the next few stops include Swansea and such like. There’s no more room
for luggage and people are standing in the aisles. I don’t know how the train
operators are allowed to get away with such incredible overcrowding. I’ve had
to put my suitcase under a table which hasn’t made travelling comfortable for three other people – and still people are crowding on and trying to find somewhere to
lodge themselves and their baggage.
Another
stop and yet more passengers and another run along the seashore. Makes me think
of how those trains got swept away by the tsunami in Japan – although there the
comparison ends. I can’t imagine Japanese railways running such a rickety
service.
I’ve
really enjoyed the few days I’ve spent with ... . After torrential rain on
Tuesday and high winds on Wednesday the weather settled down to hot sunshine
and beautiful blue skies. It’s been so peaceful until I got on this train. (We’ve just
stopped in Llanelli and yet more people are struggling to get on including a
huge contingent of women in pink polo neck shirts. It’s beginning to feel like
a molue* bus) I’ve done a lot of
walking and a lot of visiting the local pub. (Everyone now
is singing
‘Happy Birthday to you’ and clapping – this has to be one of the most
surreal journeys I’ve ever been on and one of the oddest e.mails I’ve ever
written!)
I think
I’ll just stop trying to write what I intended writing initially and just
maintain a running commentary on this trip ... Every time the train sways
there’s a big OOOOH as passengers are thrown into unexpected intimacies with
strangers. A lot of women are getting to know a lot of other women very up-close and personal. We’ve just
passed a bit of water with some very fit, in every sense, young men jet ski-ing
and the response let me imagine what it must be like to visit a women-only male
strippers club. I’ve never been to one – have you?!! The men on this train are
beginning to squirm uncomfortably and the train rocked alarmingly to its
right side as women strained to see the jet ski boys.
A tunnel
gives another reason for more hysterical mirth. I wish I understood Welsh! Now
someone has started singing the hokey-cokey and there’s been a huge choral
response. God help us if the standing in the aisles women really start dancing. I think
these two little carriages will just topple over. We’re going very, very slowly
now, whether it’s because the train can’t take the strain, the driver’s slowing
down to abandon ship, or the fact that we’re crawling into Swansea – I think
- where amazingly the train will stop, presumably to load up some more.
This is
fun – for me, a watcher, not for anyone else as yet more women with more wheelie
suitcases try to get on to this train. There’s a blow-up female doll lying
obscenely on the platform. I don’t know whether its exit was voluntary or not
as the hen party still seem to be on board. Perhaps she was ejected by the
attendant after her shameful, naked gyrations over the heads of the passengers
between Carmarthen and Swansea.
She looks all out of bounce and hot air now; all limp-limbed and abandoned.
I’m
sitting in the middle of the carriage opposite a young woman who’s been gamely
trying to read a novel since Milford Haven and a young girl whose legs
are squashed by my suitcase under the table. An elderly woman from Pittsburgh is sitting next
to me. She says she’ll have something to tell her church group about when she
gets home. The young girl has now moved next to her mother and a skinny woman
in a nautically striped T shirt has taken her place. She’s complaining about my suitcase despite the fact that
there’s no room in any of the luggage areas and the table opposite
and the aisles are also cluttered with someone’s suitcases. The woman can’t get her copy of the
Daily Telegraph open as pink champagne swigging would-be X-Factor contestants
keep swaying their bums in her personal space. I’ve been hearing the word
X-Factor mentioned and they’re wearing black T shirts with ‘One Direction’ in bright pink
lettering. They look like a wannabe group. The church lady asks them what
they’re going to sing. Glad I didn’t, as it turns out that ‘One Direction’ is
the boy band that won the last X Factor series. These girls think our table of
three fifty to sixty-something year old saddos are hilarious. We are. Pathetically. We seem to be the only people in the world
who don’t know that there is a live X Factor broadcast from the Millennium
Stadium today. Hence the overcrowding.
Now I’m
not a naturally quiet person but I’ve said hardly a word for the past two hours.
American church lady tried to read her Kindle and then shut her eyes
just as I was telling her how I bought my husband a Kindle for his birthday and
that it worked to access the internet in Nigeria. She gamely realised there was
no option but to ignore my intrusive suitcase and conversation openers and
decided to transport herself elsewhere by shutting her eyes. She just asked me to wake her
up at Cardiff
so that she wouldn’t miss her connection to Heathrow. Nice young woman is still
trying to read, but Telegraph woman who only got on at Swansea, has informed nice
young woman that she’s
been visiting her daughter in the Gower Peninsula and has the two most
beautiful, intelligent grandchildren aged 3 and 7 months ever born. She’s also
let slip that it’s so hard to fit in visiting them between yachting in the Caribbean and taking care of her garden ‘on the Wirral’.
She’s got photographs out and I’m twitching. Forget X Factor/hen
party contestants
– this is serious grandmother one-upmanship wars. You will be proud of me when
I tell you that I’ve resisted the urge to engage and turn my computer around
and show off a splendid array of photos and video clips of my grandchildren and Norway. I’m not a show-off.
Everyone’s
counting now. The hen/X-Factor contingent each have a number. They call out,
‘One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!’ then (sounds like)
‘Een! Dai! Tree!” and the rest which I can’t catch in Welsh. Then French (with
help). Now someone’s trying German – no hope... Now it’s back to English and
Welsh. How long can they keep this up for?
More
singing. More swaying. More counting. More drinking. Telegraph lady is thawing.
She’s folded up her paper and is grinning like the rest of us. This just isn’t
a serious journey. Pittsburgh
church lady is now keeping her eyes open and worrying about how she’ll get off
the train. I tell her I think most people will be getting off in Cardiff if the train
manages to crawl that far. She tells me that she loves Britain and flies over to stay at
St Davids at least twice a year. She says, not intending any irony, that she
loves the peace and quiet of Wales.
When we stop laughing we realise that there’s a general handing around of tickets,
and shuffling them around as adults and ‘children’ swap tickets. Who’s an
adult? Who’s a child? Who can’t tell? – Me. The train’s slowing and we’re pulling in
at Cardiff. An
enormous cheer’s just gone up inspired by the sight of the Millennium Stadium.
Everyone’s
got off the train except for Telegraph woman and me! The carriage is very quiet and empty. We tootle on.
1 comment:
So funny!
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