I set off on Friday afternoon, around 4 in fact, with all my bags – my main bag containing clothes and my laptop, and my camera bag with two cameras and accessories.  The plan was to miss out London as best as possible, travelling via Clapham Junction and Watford Junction.  It’s a route I’ve taken before and I knew it would be busy, but the aim was to avoid the tube.  The first section of the trip went fine, and although I had to stand on the train from Clapham to Watford, I was reasonably happy.  The train from Watford to Lancaster, on the other hand, was slightly less enjoyable.

First of all the train was busy.  That was ok, and I didn’t really mind sitting on the floor in the vestibule area.  The key thing was that I could see my bags – there was thousands of pounds worth of kit in them which I can’t afford to replace and that kit is my livelihood.  So I sat with it.  A few other people were in the same area as I was, initially two girls and another guy although one of the girls left and must have found a seat somewhere (they declassified two of the first class carriages because the train was busy and I guess she sat in one of those).  Shortly the guy got off and the other girl moved to a seat in the next carriage which left me by myself.  During the trip up to this point various people had been walking up and down going to the shop and things, including a couple of young lads who had clearly been drinking and were a little aggressive.  After a while one of them came and stood opposite me and made a phone call to, what seemed like, his girlfriend.  During it he told her about this lady who he had been sitting near who had got him a bit wound up – his friend had been playing music on his mobile phone and she’d asked him to turn it down.  This had obviously made them a bit worked up and I guess they hadn’t been too polite to her.  Shortly afterwards she had apparently told them to move a bag which was touching her foot.  This, apparently, was the last straw.

The lad who was on the phone was explaining this to his girlfriend in pretty colourful language and at one point he turned around to be and said “sorry for my language, sir, this woman’s just been winding us up”.  I’m not offended by it, so I told him it was ok, and he carried on his conversation.  Once off the phone he started talking to me.  He was obviously drunk but seemed reasonable.  He explained that they were squaddies doing their phase one training and it was one of the rare weekends they get off.  He said they weren’t allowed to drink during phase one and when they get time off they just go mad.  This seemed fair enough to me.  He also had a whinge about people from London.  When I told him I was from Aldershot he asked me a few things about how he would get the train to visit his girlfriend, doing her phase two training in Aldershot, and I happily explained.

Shortly he was joined by his friend who was saying things about how he had to leave the seats they were in or they he would have hit the lady.  But that “I ain’t no wife-beater”.  He also complained about another one of their group who had apparently been telling him he should apologise for the way he spoke to her.  He then turned to me and said “if he comes back, do you mind if I spark him out?”, and punched the train wall.  Hard.  To which I replied, “I think it might cause a bit of trouble”.  His friend agreed saying something about not ruining their careers.  Soon enough the third one joined them.  He was clearly much more drunk than the other two.  He started to tell the second guy how he should apologise for being disrespectful to her, and how they had trained together and where in the same squad.  This started an argument.  Luckily it died down reasonably quickly when they realised two of them were getting out at the next stop.  The most drunk one was supposed to be getting off one stop later.

As the train slowed down they moved towards the other set of doors in the vestibule out of my view, and people started making their way from main area of the carriage to the doors I was sitting next to.  Just as I stood up to let people off the train one of the squaddies, the third to join me previously, came flying across the train covered in blood.  He was swiftly followed by another, the second to join me, kicking, punching and generally beating him pretty hard.  The thought ran through my head that I should do something about it, but I didn’t suppose I’d be able to help the situation with two large, trained, drunk lads.  There was a middle-aged man and another young lady waiting to get off with me, he tried to reason with them, she screamed for them to stop.  They weren’t having any of it.  After a while, just as the train doors opened, two guys from elsewhere in the train got involved.  One threw one of them off the train while the other, who it looked very much like had been trained himself (a bouncer, I thought), restrained one of them.  The one inside the train calmed down very quickly (I suppose he didn’t have much choice while being pressed against the wall by this other passenger) while the one on the outside stayed quite aggressive.  The train driver closed the doors until the police arrived to keep them apart.

Once the police arrived things got back to normal pretty quickly.  We’d lost about 15 minutes on the journey time and they made an announcement about an “onboard incident” (so now you know what it means), but shortly got on our way again.  I was quite happy to sit back down with my bags where I was before, but the train manager was worried about the blood on the walls.  Sure they needed to clear it off, and people who were passing through were pulling alarmed faces when he told them to keep clear of the walls, but I had been there when the fight broke out and had been sprayed with blood from the people themselves, so I wasn’t too bothered.  Either way, he didn’t want me there.  So I asked what I could do with my bags – there wasn’t space on the rack and I didn’t want to leave them behind.  He said I could just put them in the corridor, so I did.  And I stood next to them.  A few people came past, I very kindly opened the door for them, I was a bit in the way.  Shortly the train manager came to me again and said “you’re really in the way, can you please sit down, there are plenty of seats”.  I explained about my bags again.  I also said I was happy to take them with me, but I’d have to put them on the seat, and given they had already announced this journey that people must removed bags from seats, I wasn’t really sure I was allowed to do that.  “I’ll make an exception given the circumstances”.

Given all this, that I’d just witnessed the fight and everything, I thought I was remarkably un-shaken.  Having said that I think I might have been a little short tempered with the train manager.  I can see his point, but I can also see mine.  I suppose it will have been a reasonably stressful event for him too, and we were both probably a little tense, but I really wasn’t impressed by the way he spoke to me.  I’d have been quite happy sitting in a blood stained vestibule for the next 45 minutes.  By this stage I just wanted to be left alone.  I dread to think what the other passengers thought of me.

By ‘the man on the other side’, I mean the man sitting on the floor in front of the other door.  This is one of the reasons why I really would prefer this train not to be delayed.  It’s full.  Packed, in fact.  People are generally being quite friendly about it all, but it’s not exactly an enjoyable journey.  And we’ve stopped again.

The other thing which irritates me a little is the way in which, when we got on and following one of the other stations, the guard (or train manager as I think they call them these days) made an announcement about tickets.  Apparently there will be a full ticket inspection.  Ignoring the fact that there has, so far, not been any kind of ticket inspection, I don’t see why he feels a full ticket inspection would be beneficial to anyone on this service.  Now I’m not saying that they shouldn’t bother with it because it’s ok to not pay for the train, I’m saying it because, I’d bet, the majority of people on this service have in fact stuck to the rules and fully paid.  Given this, and the fact we are all squashed in here like sardines, it would be a major inconvenience for our train manager to actually  make his way down the train to ask us to dig out our tickets.  This is assuming he meant he actually would and wasn’t just saying that to put off any would-be fare evaders (though presumably anyone trying to do that wouldn’t be going anywhere to a strict timetable and so wouldn’t cram themselves onto this train…).

Having said that, if he were to check tickets right now I’d be able to ask him why we are still stopped.  I think it must be single line working here – a few trains passing the other way more regularly than normal and the rolling forward like we were a moment ago are both good signs.  Ah, there’s an announcement.  From the driver – the train manager obviously doesn’t want to tell us anything – saying it’s track issues and that there are a few trains ahead of us still.  Single line working it is then.  The lady across the carriage (squeezed in between the man and the suitcase) is on the phone.  It’s really quite amusing.  “I should get half my fare back for having to sit on the floor anyway.”  You don’t use trains much do you, love.  “This is the worst journey I have ever taken.”  Again, you clearly don’t use trains very much. “I’ve listened to my iPod, played some games on my phone, I’ve done everything!”  I’m sorry. Sob, sob.  Another announcement.  We don’t know anything new.

I’m being a bit unfair I think. I do long distance training all the time and it’s very rare to be held up for this long.  It happened last when I went to my brother’s wedding rehearsal.  At least that time I had a seat, it was light outside and they told us what was wrong.  If I were a journalist for one of the right-wing tabloids I’d be screaming about it not being a surprise people don’t use public transport in this country.  I’d also be doing it from my big comfy seat in first class while sipping complimentary drinks.

Someone’s smoking in the toilets.  I can smell it.  Yum.  My phone battery is dead too.  Great.

Yes, it’s 8.44am and I’m on the train, just past Rugby, on my way to Lancaster.  The plan was always to get the 6.04 train from Aldershot into London and I did wonder if the early morning was worth it just to get in to Lancaster a bit earlier, but I think I made the right choice — I could hardly breathe in my flat with all the paint fumes around so wasn’t exactly sleeping well anyway.

Talking of paint, the decorators should be busily working by now, and I’ve had no phone calls from them so I guess they got into the flat alright.  That or they are giving today a miss.  I did ensure there was a suitable stone jammed in the main door as I left the building this morning, but I wasn’t sure it would last the course from half five through until eight.

We’ve just gone past a school with all the kids getting ready to start their day.  I was thinking about this yesterday: given my timing and sleeping habbits now, I really don’t know how I managed to make it up for school every day.  We used to all meet up at Ben’s house and do something (watch TV for a bit, play on the N64 or Playstation, etc) before wandering up the hill at about 8.30.  I suppose school days were only six and a half hours long with an hour for lunch, not the 8 hours I’m supposed to work every day now (though usually end up working more), and I did get into the habbit of napping when I got home from my paper round for an hour or so, and I do remeber almost falling asleep in English from time to time.  Maybe that’s how I managed it, maybe it’s not such a mystery.

I’m trying to get into the habbit of sleeping when I get in from work – I really like it, it makes me feel refreshed and then I can stay up that bit later when I have things to work on.  I guess my schedule is a little strange now, but I think I might struggle with going back to working and living ‘normal’ hours.

With all this talk of sleep I’m feeling even more tired.  Maybe I should try to get some sleep while I’m just sitting here, I don’t think I’m going to get much else done and there’s another hour and a half before we get to Lancaster (not to mention the 15 or so hours before I’ll end up getting any more real sleep).  If I get another hour now that’ll take me up to around 7 hours in the last 48 hours.  That’s 41 hours of being awake and what do I have to show for it?  A theatre programme and this blog entry.  Well done me for being so productive.

You know, now I’m hungry.  I guess it is just about breakfast time.