Bank Holiday Sardines
An overfull service from Kings Cross to Edinburgh yesterday.
Despite the fact we were packed like sardines in a tin, I found the journey passed quite quickly. Probably something to do with everyone being in the same situation, which breeds a certain camaraderie. One kind family from Portsmouth even shared their chapattis with the other passengers.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Still, at least your carbon footprint per passenger mile will be a little lower than normal.
May 7th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Absolutely. This is the future!
May 9th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
How many chappatis and how many passengers? Was it like the loaves and fishes?
May 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Actually, they were Aloo Ge Paratis if we’re going to be picky. It was an ice-cream tub full of them. At least fifteen adults got some, I reckon.
There was also a party of Australians who offered me a vodka and coke, and I had a big bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, but neither offering really caught the public’s imagination in the same way as the paratis/chappatis.
Yes, the loaves and the fishes parable captures the atmsophere perfectly.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Aloo kay pharatas!
May 10th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Do they give you your money back when this happens? Don’t you pay for a seat?
Tony Blair retires, and Britain falls.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:53 am
For gods sake Rob this Muslim love-in gets a bit tiresome - don’t you ever get fed up of being so self-conciously bloody nice about everyone all the time ? Why would chappatis catch anyones imagination anyway ? They’re hardly cutting edge world cuisine - always the thing left behind when the rest of the buffets gone.
How about this as a being nice to minorities story - I was stuck on a train once and a gypsy played me a tune on a tin whistle in exchange for a cigarette - I was in first class and it was a surreal and slightly embarrasing experience, especially as being england no one said anything until he lit the cigarette !
You’d probably love the Paris metro too where various dregs and loonies randomly board trains, read out a prepared sob story and then go through the train - sometimes playing apalling folk music on a casette player - collecting money. A bit like “steaming” on the London tube but with gallic charm rather than ethnic thuggery.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Matt, you do make me LOL. I don’t think they were Muslim. If they had been, I could have crow-barred something about multiculturalism in there too. But believe me, when the competition is a 500g bar of plain Cadbury’s chocolate, pharatas/chappatis definitely do capture the imagination of a bunch of pissed-off long-distance commuters with aching knees.
May 11th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Now the cuisine doesn’t bother me - I would have preferred to be listening into their life stories. On the Tube, I do get a bit irritated with the mobile phone users but to allay my irritation, I try to imagine the other side of the conversation - does anyone else do this or is it not PC or will no-one own up to doing it?
May 11th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
So what’s with the first class scenario Matt?
May 14th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Belive it or not I’m considered sufficiently important at work to be entitled to it, the gypsy asked for a cigarette, I initially said no, so he said he’d play me a tune for it, before I could refuse he started playing and it seemed churlish not to give him a smoke after that.