I started an internship at Cambridge University's Conservation Science Group a few weeks ago, which involves my commuting from Norwich to Cambridge three or four days a week. Apart from the abject misery that getting up early bestows on me (regardless of what time I go to bed - if late: tiredness and nausea, if early: headache and nausea), and the trauma of walking through Prince of Wales Road on the way to and from the station each day, it gives me a greater opportunity than I would like to observe Other People from The General Public.
People commuting on trains are a strange mix. Here are some of the fauna I've noted so far:
--> Obnoxious LoudMouths, blabbering on loudly to people/into phones about the minute details of their incredibly boring lives (Example: woman whining about the trials and tribulations of getting a 25,000 pound kitchen fitted and the 'utterly insufferable' chatter of the builders. Poor diddums.)
--> Man staring intently (I won't say reading) at Daily Star/Sun/similar and then staring at nearest female (or group of teenagers, preferably), whilst eating loudly. This makes my skin crawl for many reasons.
--> Twats (simple, but adequately descriptive) who listen to incredibly shit music out loud through their mobile phones.
-->PlumMouthLongFaces - they always seem to be discussing a yacht or archery or their next transatlantic holiday. Maybe I shouldn't find it annoying, and if I believed that they had any idea of their own privileges I might not. As it is, these boys are the kind of people who will trip over a homeless beggar because they're so keen not to notice them (I watched one in Norwich do just this...)
--> Golems - contorted into bizarre bodily positions whilst engrossed in books (mostly of crime novels and Harry Potter).
There are never enough carriages for the rush hour trains back to Norwich (no surprises there, then), not helped by the fact that there is no half past the hour connection (of COURSE, when else better to half the number of services per hour? Rush hour!) so you are always cramped in next to people tired, stinky and normally breathing with difficulty.
One day I had an extremely potent experience of deja vu, and after about half an hour of wondering if I had fallen asleep and was experiencing head-fuckery, I realised that the man next to me (who rather endearingly can't seem to see and holds book/phone/paper/ticket three centimetres from his eyes) and the woman diagonally opposite from me who is an Obnoxious LoudMouth had sat in exactly the same seats, in exactly the same configuration, for the past three journeys on the same train. It was a most peculiar sensation. Like when you have a dream that is the same as daily life except for a few random details, but the details are so mundane that you have no way to tell which version is actually true.
They're going to be like old friends by the end of March.
