Another day of travelling for me, now from Bury to Manchester to Whitehaven. I got in a bad mood after someone walked into me and my coffee (coffee in a little bag with a pastry, mind you). I swore under my breath and in my head, called him the c-bomb and everything, even though I wasn’t looking where I was going.
I had to make the long trek to platform 14, this is up a travelator thing like in the old gladiators (but less lycra) and with my two bags, plus the coffee/pastry bag and also a sainsburys carrier bag with my intended lunch in.
Lots of people seemed to be in a rush, but I stood still, waiting to be carried to my train like a queen in a carrycase sedan chair.
As I got to the platform my bag fell off my shoulder, hitting sainsburys bag, which in turn in used the famed domino effect to hit the coffee bag. Unbeknownst to me the earlier spillage had weakened coffee bag considerably and my pastry and coffee fell to their deaths. I looked up to see there was another costa near the platform, mocking me.
The train was a tiny two carriage affair, and seemingly a thousand million people got on. I didn’t have a reservation, but had lots of bags and a fresh coffee to try and deal with. There was a table with four reservation tickets on, they were free until Preston. I sat down.
Soon enough the table was filled up and we all sat in typical English (or in one case, Welsh) silence.
As we pulled into Preston station I gathered my stuff, the lovely girl beside me thought I was leaving and got up to let me out. When I didn’t move she was the first to break the silence, asking if i was leaving? I said no, I was just getting my notebooks and shit together in case the presotnites got on.
She smiled, I said “let’s hope they miss the train”. And all four of us laughed and had a few brief moments of shared comradie as the seconds ticked until the train departed.
then four people got on, we all jokingly pretended to sleep. But one of them told one of use we were in their seat – we laughed and prepared to get up, all thinking we’d made friends for life
but a few minutes later eye contact felt weird, so I read the paper