It is hard to feel alone on the railway. Ordinarily you are surrounded by people from all walks of life who are just trying to get from A to B. Of course most of these people don’t want to talk to you. As I have mentioned before you do get asked the odd question, ’Is this Shrewsbury ?’ whilst standing on the platform at Wolverhampton .
However, earlier this week I had one of those rare occasions when I felt very alone. It was one of those moments you think to yourself ‘Oh no’. You know, when you are in a café, train or bus and the ‘nutter’ gets on, you start to look out of the window or at your shoes in fact anywhere but no matter how hard you try you can't help but make eye contact, and they come and sit with you, and you think ‘oh no’ as they say ‘do you like fish?’
Anyway, let me set the scene. It is late at night, a virtually empty train, a train which is running on half power leading to an eerie half light, the smell of KFC wafting down the carriages and a guard shortly to finish a 9hour 46 minute shift. A guard, who, on this fateful night, decided to take a walk through the train just to see if anyone has fallen asleep and missed their stop. A guard, who, walked into 1st class and found a young woman sat bolt upright, at a table and looking slightly anxious,
‘Hello, are you ok?’ I enquired
‘Yes’ a moments pause and then she asked ‘Do you know what a psychopath is?’ OK, at this point I start frantically to look out of the window, at my shoes, my drink, her drink, anybody’s drink but it’s no good I can’t help myself,
‘Yes, of course’ and I’m now at her mercy, the fly caught in the spiders web.
‘What, what is a psychopath?’ she questioned,
‘Well it’s a bloke who wears his Mums clothes’ I joked. I now know this was not the time for fooling.
‘You see, you don’t know’ screeched the woman who was by now extremely agitated,
‘Nobody does’ she stood up and pointed at me and carried on, ‘I told her to leave me alone or I would tell the police, well it’s her problem now and why would she make friends with my sister, she now came from behind her table and advanced towards me, I felt like shouting out ‘I do like fish’ however, always the professional I once more enquired if she was OK and her reply left me in no doubt that she was, in fact, not OK. ‘Why don’t you sit down’ I spluttered, yet this only brought about a fresh round of questions regarding my knowledge of psychiatry, her sisters relationship with the other woman and, oddly, if I wanted to see her ticket!
As she got a second wind up I began to realise that she was talking about herself, she was the other woman. I made my excuses and left for the safety of the front of the train. Big mistake. Firstly, no passengers at all in the front half of the train and secondly, I now had to walk back past her. I entered 1st class and she looked at me as if I was a complete stranger and she asked ‘Do you know what a psychopath is?’ My initial reaction was to answer, ‘Yes, you’ but resisting I thought this time I would be clever, so I said ‘No’. Ha, game, set and match to me I thought. But oh no, not so fast, she saw this one coming, ‘You don’t, then sit down and I will tell you’. My heart sank as she launched into a tirade of ranting against the other woman, but then, just as I was imagining the next days headlines, a lifeline was thrown my way in the form of the automated train announcer who called out our imminent arrival at our journeys end. As I got off the train I saw her talking to a half drunk football fan and they left the station together. I have never seen the football fan again!!!!!!!!!!!!
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