All night I was dreaming about over-sleeping and missing my train to Edinburgh in such annoying detail that when I did finally wake up (about two hours before my alarm was due to go off) that I wasnÂ’t sure if I was really awake. I should have spotted that the dream was not real as in it I was still living with my mum who was chastising me for setting my alarm clock for pm rather than am. I donÂ’t live with my mum and anyone who says I do is lying and so I should have spotted this factual inaccuracy.
Anyway, I arrived at Kings Cross in plenty of time, despite my worries. I had booked my ticket online a month ago, but not really looked at it properly and it was only now that I noticed it said under seat number “None reserved”. I couldn’t believe it. I am sure I was even asked in the set up whether I wanted to face forwards or backwards and have never booked on line before and not automatically been given a seat. Why had they not reserved a seat for me on this occasion? I had specified times and dates of travel. This became more of an issue when I looked at the departures board to see the note “Train fully booked.” Was I going to have to sit in the corridor for the entire four and a half hour trip? Which would be doubly annoying given how far in advance I had booked my ticket. This was worse than my nightmares. At least in those I just missed the train.
Luckily because I was so early I was able to be amongst the first to get to the train when its platform was announced and I walked briskly up the side of the locomotive looking for a seat without a reservation ticket on it. It wasnÂ’t until I got to the second last carriage that I found one, seemingly the only unreserved seat on the train. I checked the final carriage, came back and bagsied the seat. Another man arrived just after me, hoping I was moving into the reserved seat, but bad luck no-seat-o, I had got the only non booked space on the whole train. I was pretty angry that I hadnÂ’t been given a seat when I bought the tickets and will never be using www.thetrain-line.com again, but at least it seemed like I had got lucky.
The train filled up and I was also glad that I had got on early because quickly there was no space for people to put their luggage. Even with somewhere to sit it became clear that this was going to be an unpleasant and fractious journey. I was right at the end of the carriage and people were trying to force prams into the space opposite my chair, almost braining me in the process. The prams did not entirely fit, which meant for the rest of the journey people had to swerve to avoid them and would bang into me. I ended up having more fat womenÂ’s arses rubbed against me than I would ever want. Some people might have enjoyed this. But I didnÂ’t. And anyone who says Â…and so on.
To make things slightly more surreal and increase the possibility that this was another dream, there were a large number of families dressed in traditional Jewish clothing, (the hats and coats, the full works) in the carriage (who it turned out were for some reason travelling to Stirling). There were loads of little kids in the families and they had huge amounts of luggage and a child’s bike which was blocking up the aisle. They were milling around for ages trying to sort out their possessions and their children and find their seats. With about three minutes to go before the train set off, one of the men came up to me and told me I was sitting in one of his reserved seats. My heart sank. There had been no ticket on the chair and maybe if I had known it was taken I could have scoured the train and at least found a space that wasn’t reserved until later in the journey. Now I was fucked! And I was reluctant to give up the space, even though the man was accompanied by two small and wide-eyed girls, one of whom was destined for this place. I told him that we needed to talk it over with the guard, because the seat had not been reserved as far as I was concerned and I wasn’t prepared to sit in the aisle when I had booked my ticket way in advance. I thought that it was a hopeless cause and at one point was preparing to get up, though the man himself said, “Well don’t give it up now, because if you give it up before the guard comes then you won’t get it back.”
Shortly a sour-faced employee of the train company showed up and I fully expected to be turfed out as the other man had a reservation ticket in his hand, but incredibly the guard said that if the seat had no ticket on it when I sat down, then rightfully it was my seat. This seemed unfair even to me. After all I could have just got on the train, found no seat available and pulled out the ticket and sat down – though if I had done that (and I really didn’t), then I would have chosen a better seat than this one.
It looked like an unpleasant and embarrassing situation and I considered doing the right thing and giving up my seat, but luckily a woman further up the train came down and said there were some spare seats by her, nearer to the rest of the manÂ’s family, so they all headed up there.
It was a relief in the short term, but it only made the journey slightly more comfortable. The carriage smelled badly of vomit and faeces even as we were setting out and when I went for a wee I discovered that the toilet wasnÂ’t flushing, which was surely part of the problem. It was shaping up to be a horrible, horrible journey and one wonders if everyone had paid the same as me on this packed train how the company couldnÂ’t afford to treat us slightly better. I do not believe there has ever been a train as packed with Jewish people that has ever been as stressful and horrible as this one. And I challenge you to think of one. I know you wonÂ’t be able to, because this is the worst. The toilets didnÂ’t even work!
Later people arrived and took the seats that the people who should have been in my seat were sitting in, and after struggling to balance children on knees elsewhere the family came back and claimed the seats around me that had been taken by other passengers who had no reservation. As we tried to negotiate ourselves past the bikes and prams and people in between the carriages, queues were building up either side. An incredibly obnoxious and drunk woman was trying to get into our carriage and was asking us to get out of the way. I explained that we were just trying to change over seats and that she would have to wait, but she was impatient and rude and just shouted and then pushed by us, only to find there were no seats in the carriage as she had hoped so she had to turn back.
The man and his smallest daughter sat next to me and I wearily looked forward to the next two and a half hours with a toddler kicking my fold down table. At least I had now moved to the window so would not be hit by fat women’s arses. All the time feeling guilty because I had unwittingly stolen a seat that they had reserved (and I think they must have paid for too – which you have to if you want a child to have its own place as I believe they can travel for free if they are on your knee). Later the child would move to the table across the aisle where she vomited all over the table. It would have been a fitting reward for my intransigence if that spew had been spewed on to me.
Finally Edinburgh loomed and I was able to escape this strange Hell. The obnoxious drunk woman was pushing around in the corridor, falling over suitcases as the train rocked and it felt like an age before we stopped and I could escape this ghastly, cramped, stinking prison.
It wasn’t quite the romantic arrival I had pictured for my 20th anniversary Fringe. I had vowed that this year I won’t drink too much and will also eat healthily and not eat chips at all (they are always a drunken temptation late at night), but I broke that within ten minutes of arriving, because I was hungry and I couldn’t resist the salt and sauce and all the associations that has in my head with this fine city. Soon enough my flatmates arrived – I am in the same flat with the same people as last year, which is a delight to me. We went to the supermarket and then had a big chicken stir-fry and drank too much wine (second vow broken) and joked and laughed. My earlier travails forgotten. As always I am hopeful that I will have fun this year and that I won’t be affected by bad reviews or have nights filled with paranoia and self-pity. But once the Fringe begins I think that hope will last as long as my resolution not to eat chips and get drunk.
For the moment though, itÂ’s great to be back.
