It was Monday and I was sitting on the train waiting to leave Nottingham station after a great few days catching up with old friends. I felt surprisingly good considering I’d just had a weekend in the midlands, usually it’s a case of hot flushes, dehydration and exhaustion as my body tries to recover from the abuse its taken.
I thought I’d take advantage of my relative clarity, be productive and write a blog entry so I pulled the pad and pen out of my bag and smiled at the diminutive woman sitting on the opposite side of the table to me. She was in her late thirties, had lank, mousey coloured hair and sharp, almost rodent like features. She returned a disinterested, half smile before turning her attention back to the stack of brochures of dullness and heavily doodled notes that she’d used to colonise most of the table.
The moment my pen touched the paper she got her mobile out and made a call, a full blown phone meeting with some client or colleague. I tried to ignore her but her nasal tone and thick west midlands drawl felt like knives in the mind. Don’t get me wrong, I like west midlands accents, I’m not accentist or anything before you go accusing me of that. I’ve got friends who are from the west midlands and everything. As the train pulled out of the station it got worse with several more people adding to the din, pointlessly informing some poor soul on the other end of the phone that they were on the train and it was just leaving the station.
Why do people feel the need to do that?
My salvation as ever came in the form of my headphones meaning I could use techno to block out the incessant clamour but its times like those that I wish I really could have a Strutterbubble™.
It was the same on the way up the previous Friday evening. I took my seat on the London to Nottingham train, took my book from my bag, nodded at the young bloke sitting next to me and the second we started to move an annoying bastard sitting in the seat in front began jabbering away on his Bluetooth headset. At a volume that can only be described as fucking annoying he customarily informed his wife that he was on the train then switched to speaking in a baby voice, spouting sickening lovey dovey shit at her for the whole carriage to share and enjoy.
When he showed no signs of relenting any time soon I pulled out the trusty headphones and got lost in a world of Red Fang and Mastodon until after about an hour when mercifully he got off the train. Off came the headphones and after a minute or two the guy next to me asked me where I was going. I told him Nottingham and found out that he was on the way from Bournemouth to spend the weekend with his girlfriend who lived in Leicester. I asked him what he was doing down in Bournemouth and he hesitated.
‘I’m in the army,’ he said after a brief pause.
‘Interesting.’ He still didn’t seem to know how I’d taken the information. ‘I haven’t got a problem with squaddies or anything like that,’ I revealed. He seemed to relax a little. ‘My problem is with the wankers who send you to places you shouldn’t be.’
‘Oh, the pen pushers,’ he said smiling. I offered him a beer and he politely declined, producing one of his own from his bag. It was half seven on a Friday night after all.
‘So I take it you must get stick for being a squaddie then?’
‘A fair bit. Some pubs won’t serve us and last week I was refused a packet of fags at a supermarket as well. Girl at the checkout wouldn’t accept my army ID, I had to get the manager down and everything,’ he explained.
‘That sort of thing must be frustrating.’
‘It is, but you have to put up with it. There’s no point getting wound up about it, that’ll get you nowhere.’ I admired the patience he had for someone so young, a virtue I’m still desperately trying to develop even now.
‘So, you done any tours yet?’
‘Not yet,’ he replied, ‘but I’m due to do my first either at the end of next year or early 2012.’
‘Where you got to go?’ I asked.
‘Afghanistan.’
A pause. What do you say to that?
‘Fuck. Harsh,’ was all I could manage. Hardly the most profound thing I could have said. ‘How old are you?’ He told me, twenty one. ‘And how do you feel about it?’
‘Well, I’m a bit apprehensive,’ he said calmly.
‘Apprehensive? Shit, I’d be hell of a lot more than apprehensive.’ He chuckled.
We carried on talking and I found it fascinating listening to why he joined the army, what he wanted to get out of it, how he’d rather sit on a train for six hours to go and see his girlfriend rather than be bored stupid stuck at the barracks all weekend. Then as we slowed down to draw into Leicester station he grabbed his things and stood up to leave.
I stuck my hand out and said, ‘I’m Paul, pleased to meet you.’
‘I’m Mark, you too,’ he replied. ‘Have a good weekend.’
As he walked along the platform to meet his girlfriend I wished him all the luck in the world. In the not too distant future Mark will experience things that would scare me shitless, things that even if I could I don’t think I’d want to imagine. I sincerely hope that I don’t see his face on the news in a year or so, another name to add to the tally that shows no sign of declining any time soon.
I wonder; if the politicians who sent young men like Mark to places like Iraq and Afghanistan had to go out there themselves on a tour and fight on the salary they pay their soldiers, would they be so quick to go to war?
It is starting to finally happen. Troops return after two, three, sometimes four tours of Iraq or Afghanistan. I feel for them because they're hurting, so strung out and shell shocked. What next? Work at UPS? Not a bad job, but how do they turn it back in the 'real world'?
ReplyDeleteSupport your troops they tell me as a magnetic sticker is plopped onto the side of their car. What does that mean? These guys and girls need the country the most when they come back!
As for the pen pushers, no they wouldn't send their kids or even themselves because these fools in some capacity are not fools and know that it is bullshit.
Let the poor do it.
GWB II still needs to be tried for war crimes.
D Chaney is a killer.
I think about this shit all the time bro. Nice blog.
I'm liking your blog... However one point how come you spoke to the squaddie but ignored the woman, if you had not judged and spoken to her she may not have been what you think, and if you had then you would be working with fact not judgement - what judgements are made of you ask and what would folk find you if they spoke before concluding - just a thought...
ReplyDeleteGood point there anonymous, I hope I can shed some light on your question.
ReplyDeleteOk, the reason I spoke to the squaddie and not the lady with the phone is because she didn’t offer me the chance.
In both cases my initial contact with each person was to smile at them. From the squaddie I had a friendly smile returned. With the lady I received the half smile I spoke of that was only given reluctantly because she accidentally made eye contact with me.
With the squaddie I sat with my headphones on for the first hour of the journey thanks to Mr Loverman in front of me babbling away. Then when I removed them he asked me a question so I answered him. He seemed a nice guy so we carried on talking from there.
With the lady, as I say she ignored me after the initial contact and within minutes made it quite clear that she wasn’t interested in conversation by pulling out her phone and talking as though I wasn’t there. I think she made about six calls on the hundred minute journey leaving less than three minutes between each. It would have been hard to get a word in edgeways.
Looking at it again I can see how I could give the impression I’d already badly judged her from the negative description I gave her. I wrote that based on my current impression rather than my first and that, in retrospect, was probably a mistake.
And I understand that people could easily be misled by my appearance, especially if you know me and what I look like. Put it this way, the way I look makes some people visibly surprised when I’m polite and courteous towards them, especially little old ladies.
If I didn’t make these things clear enough, I apologise. This blog writing malarkey is still a fairly new thing to me and sometimes the scenarios in my head don’t seem to quite translate in full into what I write. But thank you for reading, I appreciate you taking the time to do so and post your comments too. At least I know there’s someone out there… :-)