Friday, June 29, 2007

Train Follies

Ever since the work laptop was superseded by my PSP, the Lime Kettle posts have been coming from my desk at work where I have had a chance to read the papers and collect my thoughts...

Sometimes though, you wish you can just capture something then and there on the train and pass that on to you my dear readers.  I have had a few of these train moments this week... so in summary I will share them now:

The Sex Was Awesome!
Coming home the other night, a girl sits behind me and she is already yacking on her mobile phone.  Loudly.  I fire up the PSP and I am loading my FIFA 07 Soccer game and right in the pause of the music as the game loads up I hear clear as a bell.  "We spent the whole weekend making love!  The sex was awesome!  I came about 5 times".  Now I am no prude, but why do early 20's somethings feel that the quiet train is a place to talk loudly into the phone about your sex life?  Of course I hit MUTE on the PSP and listen in to her chat, but it tapered off into discussions on shopping and so I pumped up the volume and tuned out.  Needless to say when she did get off the train at Penrith, she was still yacking.

Morning Callisthenics
Train pulls into Penrith station on the way to work early one morning and the train is reasonably full.  A lady, wearing a pastel lime green tracksuit who is in her late 40s and of a "rotund" build gets on the train and squeezes into the little single seat under the stairs.  I am sitting one seat back from her and facing her as she then stands up in the aisle and takes out some hand cream.  She rubs her hands with the white cream and then starts doing stretching exercises... reaching for the stars and then trying to touch her toes.  She repeats this several times.  She then walks briskly up the aisle.  Then she's back.  Then she's up the aisle again and back again.  I realise she is walking "for exercise" up and down the aisle.  She does this a further 3-4 times and I realise she is wearing pink bed socks instead of shoes.

She then takes out a pillow and with an air of obsessive compulsion takes out a square pillow and proceeds to wrap her matching lime green scarf around it... and its hard to describe but it took her about 10mins to do this as she was obsessed with getting it perfectly straight.  She then sits down and does ALOT of shuffling of said pillow as she goes from leaning against the window to leaning against the wall of the stair well in her little single seat.  She has also procured a large (think double bed size) pink blanket and she spends an eternity shuffling and getting comfortable.  The woman sharing the seat opposite her gets up at some stage and moves away to the next level of the train... clearly fed up with this delusional woman.  I should also say at all times this nutty lady had a massive smile on her face and her eyes looked wide... I now think in hindsight she was on some sort of medication.

When she is comfortable we're now near Strathfield and a girl has sat down opposite her.  The girl has a bad cough and keeps coughing.  The nutty lady then glares at her and tells her to take her cough outside... the girl moves away.

She finally seems to doze off in her blanket as we're going past Newtown and just 5mins from terminating at Central.  If you dont know Sydney geography, she has taken 75km of an 80km journey to get comfortable...  one of the most bizarre things I have seen on the trains.

The Silent Killer
Last night coming home I am sitting next to a young lady in her 20's.  I am playing PSP and she is reading.  Then I smell it.  A vile fart.  Horrendously bad - and I have my own benchmarks in that area - and it seems to be coming from my right side ( i.e. the girl).  She keeps reading but it is really bad but she doesnt seem fazed.  I know it wasnt me and I am sure it was her, but I cant be sure.  It passes only for it to return 10-15mins later.  Now I know it wasnt me, but what if it wasnt her?  Then she may think it was me?!  Bloody hell... it was bad.

She got off the train at Emu Plains and I didnt smell it again and I now submit this scenario to dismiss the notion that "Whoever Smelt It Dealt It".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for a laugh Clay. Exercise on the train has merit I suppose - a good way to get both things done at once. Perhaps you should give it a go yourself! And why not take a blanket and pillow along - it's just about impossible to get comfy in that little seat under the stairs - especially with people coughing all over you and whatnot!