Taste and Decency

Should I perhaps be concerned that my wife is reading a book called The Adulterer's Club? Should she in fact be more concerned that I have just finished reading Lolita, a book that made my stomach turn with disgust and one that I feared my fellow commuters would consider me a shameful pervert for reading? (To clarify, I was reading this as part of The Independent's 'Banned Books' series which also includes A Clockwork Orange and Kafka's Metamorphosis.)

Reading is the great past-time of the commuting public, second only to sleeping and reading a newspaper. Not sleeping and reading a newspaper at the same time (although many a commuter can be seen dozing off while reading the news), as that is surely beyond even the most talented multi-tasking female, but I'd say that the order would be reading a book, then reading a newspaper and finally soundly sleeping. One of those distasteful free London newspapers recently said that the favourite distraction of commuters was gazing at an attractive fellow commuter, but that seems impossible when people’s eyes are either buried in some reading material or tightly shut.

People's reading habits - if the literary preferences of the people on the trains I take can be considered a fair representation of the general public – broadly mirrors people's listening habits. It's the usual pedestrian, big-name rubbish that you see time after time. I'm pleased that people take an interest in reading (and listening to music for that matter), but it does concern me that people gravitate time after time to the kind of books that you see increasingly advertised on posters and billboards – bankable authors capable of shifting many a thousand copy for the publishers. The synergies and similarities between publishing houses and record companies are now so entwined that it makes complete sense for a company like HMV to own Waterstone's; hence, given my opinions on the increased commoditisation by the publishers and record companies of our tastes via the outlets that force it further into our eyes and ears, it may not surprise you to hear that the recent announcement from HMV that its profits for the year to end April had halved actually brought a wry smile to this face.

I was, however, bitterly disappointed to hear that small music retailer Fopp had gone bust. Aside from Other Music in Manhattan, to me Fopp was the best music retailer in the world. Over the past ten years I have probably bought 50 CDs and books from various branches of this innovative retailer, but spent hardly any money because you could pick up back catalogue CDs for a fiver. Even though it was a chain (albeit a small one), branches of Fopp had the feel of a small independent music shop, like Rough Trade in Covent Garden, and it felt like it was a secret only known to absolute music connoisseurs. Unfortunately that was probably its undoing in the end because not enough people knew about it. Fopp RIP.

I don't feel superior by reading classic, confrontational, risqué or indeed just plain unusual literature on the train; I just feel like an individual with a predilection for variety and the obscure. I don't feel smug by listening to leftfield music on my iPod; I just feel like this is the only tangible way I can express a sense of individuality in a world that increasingly respects convenient homogeneity over the interesting. Still there's no escape from corporate branding here either – our tastes are branded 'alternative' and my fellow individualists and I are herded together under this convenient descriptor. But give me Bret Easton Ellis over Harlan Coben or Vince Flynn any day; Nick Cave over James Morrison and you'll make me happy.

Further observation of commuting behaviour would actually reveal that the next most popular habit among the proportion of the populace who either by choice or necessity are forced to take a train from home to work, would not be reading or sleeping, but acting self-centred and obnoxious. I'm a considerate and polite commuter myself; I'll let people off the tube before I try to board, and I'll graciously allow others to alight before me rather than leaving them sat in their seats waiting for a break in the queue of people heading through the doors and onto the platform.

Oh how beatific my life would be if only people offered me the same level of courtesy and respect!

Even in spite of an expanding waistline, I am of slight build. This isn't a problem for me, in fact I actually quite like the way I was made. However, this slim frame tends to mean that fat men tend to gravitate to the vacant seat next to me. It's the only way I can explain the way such rotund individuals will take up a quarter of my seat or hog the arm rest as if it's their God-given right to more space on account of their sizeable backsides. It seems I am not alone in this as my travelling friend Paul (who I'm sure would not mind me saying that he's a bit larger than I) was yesterday recounting a situation where a huge fatty took the window seat next to his and wedged his large bulk into the seat, and in so doing displaced Paul so that he was left clinging on to his own seat by one solitary buttock. When Paul then wedged an elbow into his tubby chair sharer's ribs – both to anchor his precarious body to the chair and to make the point that the other chap was taking up too much room – the fatty looked at Paul as if to say 'What's your problem pal?'

As if sharing your seat with another person larger that yourself wasn't bad enough, the experience can be rendered far worse if, for example, it's a blazing hot summer's day and said individual cannot control their sweating or body odour. That's happened to me once or twice and each time I've felt physically sick. The other day on the tube I sat next to someone who had this really overpowering sweet odour which, after a few minutes of plundering the olfactory memory banks in order to identify what the smell reminded me of, turned out to be the smell of McDonald's BBQ sauce for McNuggets. Lovin' it indeed, but perhaps a touch too much.

The other day a guy sidled up to my seated self, gestured at the vacant seat and emitted a small grunt. This virtually non-existent communication was intended as an enquiry over whether the seat was in fact taken. I shook my head and returned to my musings. I just knew he was going to be an arrogant bastard. Everything about his manner up to that point suggested it. So, he flopped himself down, immediately knocked my elbow off the arm rest, dumped his Costa sandwich on the tray, pulled out his mobile and proceeded to have the loudest, expletive- and sexual reference-filled conversation I've probably ever heard on a midday train. He signed off with a 'ciao' as if the nineties never happened and then ploughed into his sandwich with the table manners of a hog in the woods.

This being one of Mr Branson's always clean trains, a woman came along the train asking if anyone had any rubbish. The man next to me, now sated, picked up his empty sandwich carton and thrust it toward the woman without such a thing as a word of thanks. I really don’t think a bit of politeness would have gone amiss here, but this was clearly a man with a huge arrogance problem.

I recently happened to be catching a later train than my regular evening one. I think it was during half-term because the train was quite empty at first. It still got busy, but five minutes before the train departed there were still empty seats, which never happens during term time. I was sat by the rear doors of the carriage and the seat next to me was empty. Sitting there reading my book idly, waiting for the doors to close and the trip home to commence (I never seem able to relax fully until those doors close and we're on our way) I became dimly aware of the smell of cigarette smoke drifting into the train. I looked out of the window and there on the platform was a guy of about my age smoking. This was clearly before the smoking ban made station platforms marginally more bearable, and whilst it was annoying, it happened quite a lot before July 1 so I didn't think anything of it. The guy stubbed out his fag and walked onto the train behind where I was sitting.

As soon as he boarded I realised this guy was a really heavy smoker. I've never been able to describe it very well, but you know when you go into the house of a family where everyone smokes and has done for generations? The way that everything has that saturated smell? Well, this guy smelt like that and the odour was so strong that I could smell it even from where I was sitting. The smell of old smoke was threaded through his clothes as if the tailor making his suit had poured the contents of an ashtray between the actual suit fabric and the lining before sewing it up. As he got on, and I looked around at the empty seats around me I said to myself 'Please don't sit next to me,' and so of course he did. It took all my willpower not to gag when he sat down, taking the arm rest, naturally, and enveloped me with his nicotine reek. It wouldn't have been so bad, but he then fell asleep and as the train wobbled along his head, facing me, mouth open and snoring away, kept edging ever closer to my shoulder; simultaneously his knee kept moving across to touch mine, prompting me to smack it back onto his side of the seat with my own which then prompted him to snap his head back upright, giving me approximately a minute of comfort before his head started to loll sideward and his knees parted again.

In order to get from Milton Keynes to Wimbledon, like I needed to last week for what was supposed to be the men’s quarter finals, the train traveller has several options. You could, for example, drive down the M1 to Luton Airport Parkway and pick up a direct First Capital Connect service direct to Wimbledon. However, that line is exceptionally busy and unless you’re very lucky a seat is hard to come by even on an early train. Another option would be to go all the way into London, cross the city by tube and pick up a train from Waterloo to Wimbledon. Except that the Northern Line is my least favourite deep line and I never feel totally safe down there since July 7 2005. The third option only seems to come up occasionally, which is to take a train from Milton Keynes to Watford Junction, change there for a train to Clapham Junction, and from there pick up a train to Wimbledon. (An aside on Clapham Junction before we proceed if I may. On the outside edges of one of the platforms as you come in, there is a sign proclaiming the station to be the busiest in Britain. Whilst this may be true, it does feel somewhat disingenuous to advertise commotion and congestion so proudly. Bigger may indeed be better according to the Americans, but spend ten minutes fighting your way off one of the scores of platforms at Clapham Junction and that signage would perhaps serve better as a warning rather than a boast.)

In any case, with the prospect of not having to take the tube and instead gracefully cutting out most of central London overground, the Watford / Clapham route was the one I settled on that day. In many ways, after taking a seat on the train at Watford I wish I had just stayed on the Euston-bound train from Milton Keynes and taken the tube after all. Not because it was delayed or anything like that, but once again because of annoying fellow passengers. Specifically, an English man and his Spanish wife who boarded at the same time as me and were evidently on their way to Gatwick. I have deduced their respective nationalities on account of them talking so loudly.

She was one of life’s panickers, he one of life’s laid back sloths. She was sat next to me, across the aisle from the luggage rack onto which they’d dumped a couple of suitcases, and he was across the aisle in a seat in front of the luggage racks. This seating arrangement was arrived at after a couple of minutes of faffing about because she was worried that someone would try and steal their bags. He wasn’t bothered about it, but she was, and this was the first of many occasions on such a brief journey where her panicking prevailed over his sloth-like ways. They were both about ten years older than I and it dismays me when I see people with considerably more life experience than I just fall to pieces when faced with a slightly out-of-the-ordinary experience.

She then proceeded to worry that the suitcases would be over the weight limits the airline had put in place, so she made her husband stand at the luggage rack and re-distribute their clothes and shoes between the two bags, then test them by holding one in each hand to see if he’d been able to even them up any. She then dived into one of the bags and pulled out loads of magazines which she then thrust into a shopping bag so as to further reduce the weight of one of the bags. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. She was practically biting her nails with worry.

The next panic came in the form of the price of the tickets. The bag repacking incident now thankfully behind them, she enquired of her husband how much they’d paid for the tickets. He looked at the tickets and responded that it had cost them £13, and they both made little sounds that conveyed they were quite impressed with that price. However, she being inclined to worry, she asked if he’d got a receipt, and she asked to see it. He produced this from his pocket and she once again started to get all fidgety. It turned out that the tickets had in fact cost £16. Honestly, you’d have thought that someone had surreptitiously overcharged them by about a million pounds rather than just £3 by the way she went into a spiral of nervousness, urging her husband to phone the bank or find a guard and ask him what they’d actually paid. I started to feel quite panicked myself by the whole thing and was relieved when a guard came down the train and advised them not to worry, they had indeed paid £13. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole carriage (‘This is carriage 2 of 4’, the computerised female announcer kept needlessly pointing out to us all) hadn’t let out a collective cheer at the prospect of the nervous woman calming down at last.

But it still wasn’t over, for she realised that she needed to make a payment to her recently applied-for store card (clearly sold at point of sale by an eager cashier offering her 10% off if she took an account card), but that she hadn’t activated it. Panic levels rose once again into the red. She pulled out the paperwork, drummed agitatedly on the tray while she sat in a call queue and then at last! she got through and within seconds had activated the card. However, in so doing she advised the entire carriage of every single one of her personal details – date of birth, name, address, mobile number, even PIN, even the fact that she always used the same PIN – revealing finally that she wasn’t just one of life’s panicky sorts, but also one of the most stupid.

If you are fond of observing human tastes and behaviour, as I have discovered since writing these pieces that I am, travelling by train allows you to see all sorts of interesting things. That said, when people like the Spanish woman above, the heavy smoker, the arrogant chauvinist, or Paul’s fat friend are sat anywhere near you it does rather amaze you that such exaggerated personalities actually exist in this world. And when it really starts to irritate you, in spite of feeling good about using public transport and doing your bit for the environment, the solitude of sitting in traffic does present a certain appeal. Then again, I'd have nothing to write about then.