Trains: is it time for noise vigilantes?

It’s a very long time since I commuted into London every day and like Reggie Perrin my routine was always the same.

My alarm clock would wake me up at 5.30am. Shortly before six I would leave the house to drive to the station to catch the train to Kings Cross.

There was a tiny newsagent/cafe on the platform where I’d buy a paper and if there was time I’d order a cup of tea and two slices of buttered toast that came in a brown paper bag.

I’d then stand at the same spot at one end of the platform with largely the same group of people and when the train arrived we’d get on the last coach and sit in the same seats.

The thing is, I didn’t know any of their names or what they did in London because we never spoke. Not once.

One of our group was the spitting image of an old friend of mine. For several years we sat diagonally opposite one another, he with his book, me with my newspaper, and despite not speaking there was definitely an unspoken bond.

Then, one day, two new people joined our little gang, a young good-looking couple who inadvertently took my friend’s seat and the one next to it and I have never forgotten the confusion on his face.

To be fair he accepted his loss with extremely good grace - he moved to another seat across the aisle - and the new arrangement lasted for a year or two until one half of the good-looking couple got pregnant, stopped getting the train, and was never seen again.

No-one asked about her welfare or the baby because, as I say, we never spoke.

But nor did we bother one another with phone calls or other unwanted noise (music seeping from headphones, for example) which brings me to the point of this post.

Last week I had a meeting in London so I made one of my increasingly rare journeys into the capital by train.

Not only was every member of the old gang conspicuous by their absence, on the return journey a woman in my carriage was having a conference call … on speaker phone! There were three people on the call and we could hear every word.

After half an hour I couldn’t bear it any longer so I moved to the next coach. Within minutes the passenger in front of me was on her speaker phone, holding the device not to her ear but horizontally to her mouth, like a contestant on The Apprentice.

When did this become commonplace or even acceptable?

I remember, 15 years ago, having to conduct a live radio interview on a crowded train. It lasted only a few minutes but another passenger took umbrage and walked the length of the carriage to tell me to “shut up”.

At the time I thought he over-reacted but now I’m not so sure. We need more noise vigilantes on trains.

And why stop there?

I’m lucky to live in a quiet close in a small village and although it’s far from being my dream house I appreciate the fact that in all the years we’ve been here we’ve never been bothered with noisy neighbours.

It wasn’t always like that so whenever we contemplate moving I think, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

For example, when we bought a flat in Edinburgh in 1994, within hours of moving in the woman downstairs started playing loud dance music that shook the floor.

Her partner, it turned out, was a DJ. Fortunately the relationship didn’t last and peace broke out (after we ‘had a word’) but that moment will stay with me forever.

Then there were the all night raves that took place on three or four consecutive weekends in a building behind our house in Camberwell.

It was so loud it was impossible to sleep but despite the racket the police didn’t want to know. Thankfully, after a few weeks, the organisers moved on.

But still …

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

I still believe in each to their own. Maybe that was the only time she had available for a conference call. Don't trains now have quiet carriages? Anyone who finds other people's conversations irritating could choose to go there.

People chatting on trains is perfect practice for shorthand students, and novelists like to sit and listen and take note too for character ideas so I say let's have more if it.

It won't be long before quiet carriages, like the old non smoking carriages, will be the only choice available. I say "choice" but of course when only one option is given and you either have to take it or leave it, that's hardly choice at all.