Commuter Boy 2

The sheer beauty of this morning's incident on the train could not be passed up for posting, hence this sequel to "Commuter Boy".

I was waiting with the insanely huge throng of very tired, mostly miserable looking people at Mortlake station (and getting quite a few glares from the millions of be-suited clones because I was going into work in my civvies, having left my smart stuff in the office last night). The usual eight carriage train turned up....

Credit where credit is due, eight carriage trains are a very sensible idea. Some Londoners look at me strangely when I say this, but anyone who has traveled on....ooo....First North Western will appreciate the advantage of running slightly more than two carriages.

...but anyway, I digress. The carriage we're waiting in front of (yes, myself and a lot of commuters are very sad and have specific carriage strategy) was deserted, and all the doors were locked and labelled out of use. B*gger. So we frantically disperse, running up and down the platform to try and find another carriage with space. One carriage shouldn't make that much of a difference, you'd think, but in actual fact that means there's in the region of 100 people trying to cram themselves in elsewhere - roughly, an extra 14 people per carriage. And bearing in mind that it's nigh-on impossible to run from one end of the train to the other before it leaves, most people go in the surrounding two or three coaches...mmm, 30 extra people on an overcrowded train...

Consequently, a lot of our journey was spent with our noses crammed into other people's armpits (luckily I was crow-barred between two lovely, sweet smelling ladies, which I though was my due reward as normally I get stuck behind the guy with flatulence problems). About midway through the journey, this woe-begone voice comes over the PA.

"We would like to apologise to passengers in the rear of the train for the severe overcrowding.

This is due to the out-of-use carriage in the back portion of the train. We have absolutely no idea why this carriage can't be used. It was like that when we picked up the train this morning, and we can't find anyone to ask about it.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this will cause."

Priceless.