Psychology of the Quiet Coach

Off the T-girl topic for a change and doing the grumpy old woman bit... prompted by Janes recent posting about train seat chivalry, it reminded me of some of those situations I so often see on trains; or to be precise, from the comfort of my reserved seat in the quiet coach - well... nearly my seat.

Quite often, by the time the intercity service reaches our humble town, most of the quiet coach seats are occupied, - but not quite enough to oust the lout, or usurp the business man from yours.... but you can tell these folk are quite practised at giving out the hidden psychological messages of 'bog off and don't hassle me' when they occupy your reserved seat.

Like for example, there's 'sleeping guy', who occupies the unreserved seat next to yours but thinks his brief case has it's own busy life to lead and cares for it by giving it your seat. This is especially annoying when your seat is the only reserved seat in the coach, and apart from 'sleeping guy' the coach is empty.

Then there's 'railway worker guys' who have a medical need to sit next to each other and discuss how well United faired in the previous evenings match - and yes, you guessed it, they occupy your seat.

And there's proffesional dude and dudess who travel the same route every day; they really don't care where they plant themselves 'cos they're only going to the next stop so it doesn't matter if they occupy someones seat.

Ladies don't get away without an observation from Ms Kate - in the quiet coach, they are the absolute the worst for using the phone... they're also the ones mostly likely to shout, if someone else uses a phone! On a recent journey, a girl got on for the last 20 minutes of the service and she managed to make 7 phone calls - I was impressed... normally us girls can only make one call in that time; perhaps she was 'business dude' in drag....

But if you're sat in my seat on the 16:20 out of Birmingham, you take your life into your hands.... unless you're a lovely old lady from Falmouth in which case I'll sit in the seat next to you, have a nice chat about gardening and treat you to tea and cake!