Once Upon A time Before Social Distancing — A Welsh Journey
In a pre-tablet world, travelling on a train, I tried to write an e.mail to a friend with my then-new-gadget; a little ‘netbook’. It proved to be hilariously difficult. I reproduce this extract as a memory of another Saturday, in another life before we had to keep one metre, two metres or six feet apart from each other. Enjoy!
Saturday 9th April 2011
Dear …
Thanks to my new toy I can enjoy typing this comfortably whilst on the move. I’ll send it when I get back.
The train I’m on is the 9.23am Milford Haven to Manchester Arriva toodle-along two carriage affair. It’s going to be a four hour journey and the carriages are heaving. Most passengers are women and it feels like — indeed probably is the biggest hen party out ever. There are some very strange outfits, tiaras and wands. It’s raucous and a lot of it’s in Welsh. I’m wondering how far most people are travelling — probably Cardiff — another hour and a half… We’ve just left Carmarthen which took us alongside the seashore but the next few stops include Swansea and such like. There’s no more room for luggage and people are standing in the aisles. I don’t know how the train operators are allowed to get away with such incredible overcrowding. I’ve had to put my suitcase under a table which hasn’t made travelling comfortable for three other people — and still people are crowding on and trying to find somewhere to lodge themselves and their baggage.
Another stop and yet more passengers and another run along the seashore. Makes me think of how those trains got swept away by the tsunami in Japan — although there the comparison ends. I can’t imagine Japanese railways running such a rickety service.
I’ve really enjoyed the few days I’ve spent with … . After torrential rain on Tuesday and high winds on Wednesday the weather settled down to hot sunshine and beautiful blue skies. It’s been so peaceful until I got on this train. (We’ve just stopped in Llanelli and yet more people are struggling to get on including a huge contingent of women in pink polo neck shirts. It’s beginning to feel like a molue* bus) I’ve done a lot of walking and a lot of visiting the local pub. (Everyone now is singing ‘Happy Birthday to you’ and clapping — this has to be one of the most surreal journeys I’ve ever been on and one of the oddest e.mails I’ve ever written!)
I think I’ll just stop trying to write what I intended writing initially and just maintain a running commentary on this trip … Every time the train sways there’s a big OOOOH as passengers are thrown into unexpected intimacies with strangers. A lot of women are getting to know a lot of other women very up-close and personal. We’ve just passed a bit of water with some very fit, in every sense, young men jet ski-ing and the response let me imagine what it must be like to visit a women-only male strippers club. I’ve never been to one — have you?!! The men on this train are beginning to squirm uncomfortably and the train rocked alarmingly to its right side as women strained to see the jet ski boys.
A tunnel gives another reason for more hysterical mirth. I wish I understood Welsh! Now someone has started singing the hokey-cokey and there’s been a huge choral response. God help us if the standing in the aisles women really start dancing. I think these two little carriages will just topple over. We’re going very, very slowly now, whether it’s because the train can’t take the strain, the driver’s slowing down to abandon ship, or the fact that we’re crawling into Swansea — I think — where amazingly the train will stop, presumably to load up some more.
This is fun — for me, a watcher, not for anyone else as yet more women with more wheelie suitcases try to get on to this train. There’s a blow-up female doll lying obscenely on the platform. I don’t know whether its exit was voluntary or not as the hen party still seem to be on board. Perhaps she was ejected by the attendant after her shameful, naked gyrations over the heads of the passengers between Carmarthen and Swansea. She looks all out of bounce and hot air now; all limp-limbed and abandoned.
I’m sitting in the middle of the carriage opposite a young woman who’s been gamely trying to read a novel since Milford Haven and a young girl whose legs are squashed by my suitcase under the table. An elderly woman from Pittsburgh is sitting next to me. She says she’ll have something to tell her church group about when she gets home. The young girl has now moved next to her mother and a skinny woman in a nautically striped T shirt has taken her place. She’s complaining about my suitcase despite the fact that there’s no room in any of the luggage areas and the table opposite and the aisles are also cluttered with someone’s suitcases. The woman can’t get her copy of the Daily Telegraph** open as pink champagne swigging would-be X-Factor contestants keep swaying their bums in her personal space. I’ve been hearing the word X-Factor mentioned and they’re wearing black T shirts with ‘One Direction’ in bright pink lettering. They look like a wannabe group. The church lady asks them what they’re going to sing. Glad I didn’t, as it turns out that ‘One Direction’ is the boy band that won the last X Factor series. These girls think our table of three fifty to sixty-something year old saddos are hilarious. We are. Pathetically. We seem to be the only people in the world who don’t know that there is a live X Factor broadcast from the Millennium Stadium today. Hence the overcrowding.
Now I’m not a naturally quiet person but I’ve said hardly a word for the past two hours. American church lady tried to read her Kindle and then shut her eyes just as I was telling her how I bought my husband a Kindle for his birthday and that it worked to access the internet in Nigeria. She gamely realised there was no option but to ignore my intrusive suitcase and conversation openers and decided to transport herself elsewhere by shutting her eyes. She just asked me to wake her up at Cardiff so that she wouldn’t miss her connection to Heathrow. Nice young woman is still trying to read, but Telegraph woman who only got on at Swansea, has informed nice young woman that she’s been visiting her daughter in the Gower Peninsula and has the two most beautiful, intelligent grandchildren aged 3 and 7 months ever born. She’s also let slip that it’s so hard to fit in visiting them between yachting in the Caribbean and taking care of her garden ‘on the Wirral’. She’s got photographs out and I’m twitching. Forget X Factor/hen party contestants — this is serious grandmother one-upmanship wars. You will be proud of me when I tell you that I’ve resisted the urge to engage and turn my computer around and show off a splendid array of photos and video clips of my grandchildren and Norway. I’m not a show-off.
Everyone’s counting now. The hen/X-Factor contingent each have a number. They call out, ‘One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!’ then (sounds like) ‘Een! Dai! Tree!” and the rest which I can’t catch in Welsh. Then French (with help). Now someone’s trying German — no hope… Now it’s back to English and Welsh. How long can they keep this up for?
More singing. More swaying. More counting. More drinking. Telegraph lady is thawing. She’s folded up her paper and is grinning like the rest of us. This just isn’t a serious journey. Pittsburgh church lady is now keeping her eyes open and worrying about how she’ll get off the train. I tell her I think most people will be getting off in Cardiff if the train manages to crawl that far. She tells me that she loves Britain and flies over to stay at St Davids at least twice a year. She says, not intending any irony, that she loves the peace and quiet of Wales. When we stop laughing we realise that there’s a general handing around of tickets, and shuffling them around as adults and ‘children’ swap tickets. Who’s an adult? Who’s a child? Who can’t tell? — Me. The train’s slowing and we’re pulling in at Cardiff. An enormous cheer’s just gone up inspired by the sight of the Millennium Stadium.
Everyone’s got off the train except for Telegraph woman and me! The carriage is very quiet and empty. We tootle on.
*molue — a dangerously overcrowded and rickety yellow bus in Lagos, Nigeria.
** a conservative British newspaper
