Look Away Now

Train journeys into major cities are rarely the prettiest of trips. Usually the tracks wind their way past old industrial areas and the backside of unfortunately placed apartment blocks covered in amateurish graffiti. The Chiltern Line into Marylebone Station is no exception. In fact, by the time a London-bound train passes Denham there's really not much of beauty to see out either side of the train save for maybe the view of Hampstead off in the distance to the left as you roll over the rooftops of Kilburn.

There should be one very notable exception to this, however. Wembley. As home to the national game the new Wembley was expected to project a certain power. It was intended to be a building that would transfix and inspire all those who saw it. To fill arriving opponents with fear and fans with pride. It was intended to do all these things..but it doesn't.

What it does do is stand as garish a reminder of what a visionless country England has become. That a nation able to design and construct architectural diamonds like St Paul's, The Houses of Parliament, the BBC headquarters, the Lloyds building, St Pancras station old and new, could have permitted the building of such an enormous tribute to averageness speaks of a loss of something at the higher levels of society. Perhaps confidence. Perhaps creativity.

Either way, what commuters passing by each morning see is a very expensive and very forgettable national symbol. The truth is, if you took away that silly and quite meaningless arch few people in this country would be able to tell the difference between the new Wembley and countless other instantly dated glass and concrete sports stadiums around the world, from Dusseldorf to Durban to Dayton, Ohio.

And that's a pity.

Norms, Observations and Annoyances: No. 11

Bag-Blocking refers to the act of placing one's bag or briefcase on the seat beside you in the hopes that it will dissuade new joiners to the train from taking that seat into consideration. It is widely considered to be the most offensive of all commuting annoyances for several reasons.

Firstly, it's just plain rude, greedy behavior. Secondly, it's a mild form of intimidation in that a Bag-Blocker is forcing an innocent commuter to ask the rhetorical question of whether or not the seat is free. Thirdly, and most annoyingly, this behavior involves play-acting on behalf of the Bag-Blocker. Initially it's the I'm-so-caught-up-in-what-I'm-doing-that-I'm-not-even-noticing-the-train-is-rapidly-filling-up false gaze they give their laptop. This is then followed up with faux surprise when someone asks them to move their bag. Oh yes. Of course, goodness me. What was I thinking?

Arse.

Annoyance Ranking: 10

Seating Rituals

Studies show that people follow the same predictable pattern when choosing where to stand in a lift depending on how many people are in the lift ahead of them. If there is nobody in the lift a passenger will stand at the back directly behind the button board. If a second passenger gets on, he/she will almost always choose to stand at the back in the opposite corner. If a third person enters, he/she will stand in front of the second passenger. And if a fourth passenger enters he/she will stand in front of the first passenger. So, all four corners now being taken, when a fifth passenger enters he/she will take the center. If a sixth or seventh passenger joins we now enter that terrifying phase (especially for Brits) where talking to (in the form of 'scuse me and pardon me) and, God forbid, even touching other passengers comes into play.

A similar, but possibly even more labyrinthine, game of human sudoku is played out by commuters each morning on trains all around the country as they unconsciously make their seating choices. Here is how it unfolds on the Chiltern Line (Note: these observations apply only to the 'Networker' Class of train. AKA...the older ones).

Before we start...the seating plan: on the Networkers there are by the doors and in the mini-cabins at either end of the carriage, a series of double seats on both sides of the aisles which face the backs of the seats in front (doubles). In the central part of the carriage the bulk of the seating consists of double seats facing double seats (quads), and across the aisle, triple seats facing triple seats (sixers).

The accepted (yet unspoken) rule in this daily game of elimination is to choose a position in the carriage which places you in the best available and most desirable seat (window/leg room/no obstructions) which is also the farthest away from anyone else. Decisions are made on the go as static calculations will cause loss of ground (and seat) to your hungry rivals. Once a passenger sits down it's game over as it's very bad form to get up and move again, though this does happen a bit on homeward-bound journeys where trains start full and get emptier stop by stop.

So...here's how it plays out: Two people entering an empty carriage will invariably choose a front facing window seat in a quad or a sixer at opposite ends and opposite sides of the central part of the carriage. If the first of these two is really in the zone, he/she will select the side of the train least likely to be 'greenhoused' by the morning sunlight.

As more people enter they will make the same selection as the first two, soon filling all the remaining prime seats. For passengers joining after all the prime seats are gone, the trade-offs will begin.

Those boarding the train at the next stop will now select aisle seats in the quads and sixers so as to avoid sitting opposite or beside the people in the window seats.

At the following station new passengers face a deeper dilemma; despite only 2 out of 4 places in the quads being taken, and only 2 of the 6 in the sixers, it is now no longer possible to sit in one without being beside or opposite someone. As the last compromise to be made in this game is usually direct contact with another human being, the doubles now start to get popular. The double guarantees only one person beside you (and potential none if the train does not fill to capacity) but the leg room is reduced and they're a bit claustrophobic.

When the first seats in the doubles are gone you have a train still less than half full and yet has no more free seats that aren't beside or opposite another passenger. With distance from others now removed from the selection criteria, the hierarchy of desire shifts back to the original priority list. So now any remaining front facing or aisle or window seats go, rendering the quads full.

With quads full and the sixes now full at their four corners (leaving only the dreaded middle seats free), the remaining seats in the doubles are now quickly gobbled up.

Passengers joining at the next stop are now confronted by a carriage with only middle seats in the sixes reaming. As direct contact with 3 other passengers is now unavoidable (one on each side and one opposite) one must quickly calculate which of the available middle seats offers the best chance at personal comfort. The experienced commuter is quickly scanning for a tiny woman vs a fat man. Someone reading a paperback as opposed to a newspaper. Perceived odors from food or drink and perceived noise from mobiles or headphones come into play in this phase of the game.

This is not quite the end game, though. That comes when there are literally only 2 or 3 seats reaming in the whole carriage. With passengers pouring in from both sets of doors you must now simply dive for any seat you can as you absolutely positively do not ever want to stand.

Norms, Observations and Annoyances: No. 8

Door Entitlement refers to the belief held by some Door Hunters (see: Norms, Observations and Annoyances No. 3) that once positioned on the bit of platform where the doors normally come to a stop you are entitled to your 'first in' status even if the train deviates from its normal stopping position and drags the doors further down the platform thus rendering you out of position. You can easily spot commuters with a sense of Door Entitlement by their desperate efforts to elbow past the lucky (and far less arsed) commuters who while initially out of place now find themselves, as a result of the driver missing his mark, in a lucky pole position for carriage entry and the choice of seat that goes with the privilege.

Annoyance Ranking: 8

The 7:33 to Somewhere Else

Trains and the great stations that marked the beginning and end of their routes once held a magical allure for most people. The very sight of them brought to mind images of adventure and escaping to unseen far-away places. No more...at least not for the weary modern commuter. To him there are no more unknown bends in the track, nothing beyond that horizon he hasn't seen before all too many times. To him a train is merely a rolling waiting room from which he will soon alight onto the exact same bit of asphalt as the day before and the day before that. Train travel to him isn't about adventure, it's about tedium and predictability.

But even the most jaded of daily commuters into Marylebone Station must certainly permit themselves just a moment of escapist fantasy when glancing over at the Wrexham and Shropshire Line's 7:33 to Wrexham General purring away on track 3 as it prepares to depart. Unlike the brightly coloured modernist stock most of us travel on these days, which have more in common stylistically with European street trams than genuine trains, the Wrexham and Shropshire is a proper passenger train.

Who among us has not looked over at the grey, vaugely old school locomotive idling away with the large and largely empty carraiges behind it and not thought, even just fleetingly, of turning around and escaping the daily treadmill by simply climbing aboard? Where is it going? Who knows? Who cares?

As a foreigner to these shores I must admit to having absoutley no idea where Shropshire is or what it looks like...but in my mind I am quite clear. It must be a place of rolling hills and over-grown grass where cows graze and insects dance in the air. A place where dark, tree-shaded rivers wind their way slowly along the outer edges of lush pastures. A part of England locked in time, untouched by the forward march of hideous progress.

If commuter trains have slowly drained all the romance from train travel, The Wrexham and Shropshire is doing it's best to single handedly put it back.

A few months back, the line survived a legal battle against the financial might of Virgin for control of the service between London and Wrexham. A real broad-gage David and Goliath story. Thankfully...David won again, and for a while the Wrexham and Shropshire became the most talked about line in the land.

Here are a few of Ian Jack's words about the line taken from his column in the Guardian:

April's morning in the hour after daybreak. A kipper is brought to the table, with toast and marmalade and a pot of coffee. Through the carriage window, blossom shoots from the hedges like upward-growing snow. Gymkhana fences and allotments lie idle, waiting to be jumped over or dug. A woman in a headscarf walks two terriers towards some woods. We are on-board the Wrexham and Shropshire line train to Wrexham.

Steadily we moved north through the Chilterns. The carriages smooth- and quiet-running 30-year-old bogeys and as steady as a rock. The cutlery refused to rattle and the coffee never escaped its china. "The full English or the full Welsh, madam?" the steward asked of the woman behind. "What's the difference?" "No difference, just served with a different accent."

Not a new joke, one suspects, but lets be honest, new is not really what you're after on a journey like this.

When Clever Met Silly

As a life-long cyclist who rides his bike to Beaconsfield station every morning I should really be an outspoken champion of the Brompton bicycle set. Those dedicated eco-friendly suburbanites proudly flying the nuclear-yellow flag of enlightened commuting (in the form of a reflective rain resistant riding jacket) who ride/carry their fold-up Bromptons to work each morning...but I'm not. And I don't know why I'm not. On paper it all makes sense. It saves them parking costs at their home station. It saves them clogging up the country roads so the school run mums can drive faster. It saves them taking a cab or the tube on the London end of their trip. All of which saves them money and shaves a few inches off the carbon foot print they leave on the world. So why I am so cynical?

I can't find one reason in particular...so here are seven:

1) Wet bikes on crowded trains are dirty and annoying.

2) Persistent wiff of self-satisfaction and superiority oozes from all Bromptonites.

3) Not sure I would trust a banker whose suit traveled with him to work in a ruck-sack.

4) As a rule...English men are way too pale to wear shorts in public.

5) Impossible not to look ridiculous riding a bike designed for children and circus clowns.

6) Hard not to be suspicious of suburbanites who insist on screaming 'Look....I'm alternative'.

7) No one really needs to see middle-management in Lycra.

A Very English Construction Project

Any seasoned commuter will tell you that over time you learn to calculate the distance remaining to your stop not by looking up at the scrolling on-board screen or by swinging your head left to right to catch station names as platforms flash past, but by using your peripheral senses to keep a constant monitor on your whereabouts. A bend in the track, A highway passing beneath you, a clearing in the trackside brush. Anyone of these minor deviations from the norm can be detected while reading the paper or sending emails and will act as a nearly subconscious indicator as to your whereabouts. None are easier to read along the Chiltern Line than the low-lying horizontal halogen lighting which illuminates the Gerrards Cross tunnel.

Ah....the Gerrards Cross tunnel. A 300m long never-ending paean to modern English engineering prowess. For those unfamiliar with the original intention, Tesco was to cover a length of track east of the station, pile landfill on top of it (so it's not even really a tunnel) and thereby create a new patch of real estate upon which Tesco would construct a supermarket, and presumably a few hundred much-needed parking spaces. Brilliant.

So in the face of 90% local opposition they moved forward with the project. That was in....2004. In 2005...the tunnel collapsed, narrowly missing a west-bound train which had already departed Denham Golf Course and in full view of passengers waiting on the Gerrards Cross platform. Oops. The mess, which was blamed on a torrential rainfall the previous day, was tidied up and after a period of assessment and consultation the project resumed again. Five years on and the site still looks like...well, a site, and the good citizens of Gerrards Cross are no closer to having a new Tesco, the added parking spaces or even just the absence of a gigantic eye-sore in the middle of the town. In fact, it doesn't even look as though they have fully buried the concrete tubing over the tracks yet. I'm no engineer...but how hard can this be?!

A quick comparison for you. The Channel Tunnel connecting Britain to France took six years to complete and covers a distance of 38kms. The Gerrards Cross tunnel connecting Gerrards Cross to, erm, Gerrards Cross has thus far also taken six years to complete and covers a distance of roughly 300m.

We all know these things are never as easy as they look, but surely this project cannot be nearly as hard as they're making it look.