Train Blog.

I wrote this blog on a piece of paper on a train to Edinburgh:

26/04/07

6:44am: So I'm on another train for another 6 hours of songs in my ears and british landscape rushing past. All I want to do is sleep, but I've got to change trains in an hour and I can get real paranoid about shit like that sometimes. Today is one of those times. My head is groggy & my legs feel very heavy.
I keep dozing off.

7:24am: Whenever I travel this journey, I've noticed there are always lots of attractive women at Coventry station. Always much more than at any other station. Is Coventry some kind of beautiful people place?
I've got a spot! I'm 26, why am I still getting spots? Fuck's sake.
I either need a small wee or a massive poo. I can't work out which.

9:47am: Just left Preston.
Had a lovely snooze. Seen some lovely sights. Laughed at the couple who got on at Crewe who were looking directly at the seat number saying 37 and said "Where's 37 then?". There's a green thing on the floor & I can't work out what it is.
Good to see at Birmingham that they've staggered the Edinburgh trains & have them leaving from totally different platforms. For those who don't know, one time I had to change trains at Birmingham I got on the wrong one. They have 2 train services that go to Edinburgh from Birmingham. One that goes up the west side route and one that goes up the east side route. Both routes are run by Virgin Trains. They decided to have them leave at the same time, one from platform 8a and one from platform 8b. Anyway, I got on the wrong one, which meant my journey was going to take an hour longer. I spoke to the trains attendants and everything was fine. So anyway I'd resigned myself to being an extra hour on the train and was fine with it. Hey, it's one more album I get to listen to. Then we got to Newcastle.
This in itself wasn't a problem, but a few minutes out of Newcastle there was this very loud noise like rocks hitting the train. Then you could feel the train coming off the tracks as it ran over something. For a second, the thought "Oh fuck, we're derailing! Oh fuck, we're gonna crash! Oh fuck, I'm gonna die!" inhabited my brain, but luckily for us we were fine and the train simply slowed down to a stop. Anyway, turns out that what we had run over was in fact not rocks, but a person who had decided they no longer wanted to live. What followed was a 3 hour standstill, followed by us having to go back to Newcastle because the person throwing themselves infront of the train had managed to actually damage the front of the train in a way that somehow meant that we couldn't actually move forward. So we had to go back and change trains. I ended up being over 4 hours late to Edinburgh. This train isn't going thru Newcastle, so I'm not particularly concerned about suicidal northerners right now.

10:37am: Dozed off for a minute and had a very odd dream where V had hurt her ears, so Seb had sex with her. Very wierd.

7:42pm: After purging my mind of that, I pretty much slept the rest of the way. Now I'm at The Good Lady Friend's flat, just chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool. Maybe I'll shoot a b-ball near a school. If you shot a basketball, would it explode or just deflate slowly? If I shot a basketball, I would definitly want it to explode. I'd be pretty pissed off if it didn't.

And then I wrote this one on the train back to Oxford. Don't worry. It's shorter than that one.

01/05/07

4:58pm: The sun is constantly shining on me which would be lovely if Iweren't in a big metal tube with too many other people hurtling down the trains at too many miles an hour coz the drivers tryin to make a 28 minute delay caused by a broken rail just outside Newcastle (It's always bloody Newcastle!). The air is clogged with other peoples sweat and odour. The sun is blazing right fucking on me. I feel sick.
One thing I've nopticed about trains is that so many reserved seats remain empty. I realise this does contradict what I just said about there being too many people on here, but basically theres this one massive group of people who hadn't reserved seatsand managed to all sit together no-one who had seats reserved seem to have got on the train. But why is this? This isn't a one off journey, this happens every time. Loads of reserved seats go unused or have people who haven't reserved then for that particular journey using them. Do people just book journeys and not use them? Does hardly anyone bother to sit in their reserved places? Other reasons I can't think of right now?

6:06pm: That group's still here, on about their 4th bottle of Cava, being all loud and thinking everyone's really interested in their reception dinners and trial periods for them to test whatever. And their kids. Everyone's kids are so bloody fascinating aren't they?

6:27pm: Yay! We're coming into Birmingham and they're all getting off! Hurrah!

6:40pm:Wow! hardly anyone's on here now! Nice.

6:47pm: The sun's finally leaving me alone now too! Ah......Lovely.

6:55pm: Coventry. Mmmmmmm......................

So there. That's the kind of thing that goes thru my head when I'm on the train. The best album I listened to on the train was Throbbing Gristle Part Two "The Endless Not" which is fucking ace!