Travelling via Birmingham's New Street Station
Is never a pleasurable experience, but one particular journey stands out for me.
It was a friday afternoon, I was the wrong end of a 3 hour train journey and to top it all off I had just spent a whole week in Burton Upon Trent.

Upon boarding the train I wasn't particularly surprised to find there were no seats available, so I cut my losses and plopped myself down on my suitcase in the little spacey bit between the doors and the toilet.
This arrangement suited me fine until such point we reached Birmingham. Before the train had even come to a halt there were people clawing at the doors from every conceievable angle, I watched businessmen savagely beating eachother with their laptop cases, women and children were being tossed into the air, one particularly elderly woman was jabbing people in the ribs with her walking stick. It was like a scene from Lord Of The Flies.

Before I could even think about repositioning the train doors flew open and what seemed like the entire population of Japan scrabbled aboard, wedging themselves in, and pinning me to the wall.

15 minutes later and a barely audible voice announces to the carriage that this train will not be leaving the platform until at least 50 passengers disembark. The silence that followed was deathly, had there been room a tumbleweed might've even blown down the length of the carriage. Everyone on board twitched nervously, waiting for someone else to sacrifice their journey time for the sake of everyone else's.

After what seemed like an eternity the train finally began to move.
Due to the vast number of people crammed into such a small area, it wasn't long before the air started to get very hot, and damp.

Cramp was setting in and I had now noticed how badly the toilet smelt like pickled shit.

The window was steaming up with the condensation of 30 peoples' breath about an inch from the end of my nose, and I had nowhere to put my right leg.To steady myself I hitched up my right knee, with my foot ontop my suitcase.
With that the train lurched throwing the other passengers into my back, I now found myself with one leg in the air, my face pressed into the window and my arms stretched out either side of me hugging the wall like some kind of commuting spiderwoman.

I was stuck like this til we reached Cheltenham Spa!


Length? As long as it takes to clear your nostrils of the stench of a Virgin toilet
(Peek_a_Boo forgot how fun B3ta was until, Fri 30 May 2008, 22:24, Reply)