Sheffield – Birmingham New Street
Glen Wilson
In case you were in any doubt British people love moaning. Seriously they do. Right now as I write these very notes I am being moaned at for being “in the wrong changing room” and being told to “put it away”. Some people! Anyway, yeah, people love a good moan, but we know this. However, just knowing is never really enough in our sceptical generation, people need proof, Wikipedia claims need citations, Sky News need confirmation. Actually that last example is a bad one, but you get what I am saying here.
So, if people ever doubt that British people love a good moan you need only take them to one place, the place in which I am currently sitting; the Quiet Coach. By its very nature, the quiet coach should be a tranquil place where people go to enjoy the serene nature of observing the world as it blurs past the window. It should be like riding on a lilo. But it isn’t, and the reason it isn’t is because people do not go there for the quiet, they go there to be incensed by anything that is not quiet. True, there are some folk in there who are sufficiently at peace with themselves, but for each one of these there are at least two sour faced, high nosed, would be 1960s private school librarians waiting to put all their energies and face muscles into an expression so scornful it could make Margret Thatcher apologetic.
These people leer round the carriage looking for anything that may make the slightest sound and then fixate on it until it eventually does make the inevitable sound that a paper bag will, allowing them to progress through their pre-rehearsed repertoire of sighing, tutting, moaning, looking round the carriage for supportive looks of derision and scorn, before their whole subverted rage is allowed to pour forward in one great surge of “Er, excuse me, do you mind?”. I think for the benefit of all of us the Quiet Carriage should be renamed the ‘Hoity Carriage’ and have done with it, that way no-one is in any doubt.
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