When 100 days of grumpy met the short story blog

Now I am a train snob, I do like a first class seat. When you spend the hours I do on the train it makes a difference to your life to be away from the hoi polloi, to have a bit of space and a bit of peace and quiet. In winter the first class carriages are nearly empty, just me and a few other men and women in suits typing away at their keyboards or barking instructions into their mobile phones. But in summer it is a different story. 

When I was 18 I never really caught the inter-railing bug. Plenty of people did though, hauling their sorry, skinny arses around Europe, living on a shoestring, sleeping on overnight trains, showering only occasionally and getting so confused by the places they see they can’t remember if the Orloj was in Vienna or in Prague.  But despite falling out with their travelling companion on the 3^rd day of the trip and hating their guts by day 10, despite catching scurvy at the half way stage and despite being beaten up and robbed three times by eastern European mafia, they still came back with smug stories of how they grew as people, how they peaked behind the iron curtain and saw the future and how life will never be the same again. Well the comrades have grown up, life got mundane and the urge to revisit their youth is all too much. The inter-railers are all retracing this steps hauling their sorry fat arses around Europe, but this time doing it in a more middle class way. Suitcases the size of small houses have replaced the rucksacks, 4 star hotels have replaced the youth hostels and 1^st Class travel has replaced the 2^nd class overnights long hauls.

Why am I telling you this well today the whole of first class was reserved for these old age inter-railers except for two seats, the inside corner of a 4-seater table and the backward facing of a 2-seater table. I asked politely if the 2-seater option was free but the woman already in situ pointed to the bags on the seat and told me it was taken. I took this to mean someone was in the loo or in the dining car and so turned my attention to the slither of space available opposite. More people passed through, more people enquired about the seat’s availability and more people were given short shrift by the school ma’amly woman sitting opposite the vacant space. But weirdly no one came back from the toilet or emerged from the dining car dabbing the corner of their mouth with a napkin after a delicious feed.

Eventually the guard came through.

‘Who is sitting here?’ He asked.

The school ma’am went quiet, suddenly less bold.

‘Whose bags are these?’ The guard asked.

Again there was no reply but the woman reached over and took the bags off the seat. The bloody bitch had been refusing people the chance to sit down just so her bags could travel in first-class comfort. She’d had the barefaced cheek to lie to her fellow passengers, had she no shame?

‘The guard looked behind him, and beckoned. A man mountain came through the door, as tall as he was wide and as sweaty as he was smelly. His bushy beard was specked with last night’s dinner and his shoulders had a fine coating of dandruff.  He smiled as he took the seat that the woman had just made vacant. Then he got out the most gruesome looking pastrami and egg sandwich and began to munch. Normally I’d be appalled but today I was rather amused by the look on the school ma’am’s face.

Remind yourself of 100 days of grumpiness here