Train Tales – Its not ok!

The train is a GREAT place for people watching.

As a daily commuter and more generally a normal person (my “normality” can be debated at later stage), the things I have seen really make me realise that the general population is not ok hun! I mean there are things that are ok to do in public and there are things that are just not ok.

One day I pull in to the train station car park and there parked next to me is a gentleman I see daily but what he was doing made me do a double take. There he was hanging out his car door with an electric shaver, giving his face a quick run over! WTF!

If this isn’t bizarre enough a few days later I am on the train and over my headphones I hear a random buzzing noise. I looked round and about fell off my seat. There he is. “Shaving man” with his electric razor having a shave, ON THE TRAIN!

WHAT? This is NOT acceptable etiquette. At what point in your life do you think, I know, I’ll just have a shave on the train?!!! Aside from the fact its not good train etiquette, its disgusting! There are bristles of his manky face flying everywhere..ok maybe not everywhere but still….

The ever polite poor victim sat beside him getting stray bristles over their being looked like they might throw up. However with this being a Scotrail service, it was only 2 carriages so the poor woman had no where to escape to as there were people crammed in everywhere. (Side note – 2 carriages at peak time on Scotrail is pretty standard, apparently they’d misplaced the rest of the train, we’ll come back to this point another day however if anyone finds the 4 missing carriages please alert Scotrail as they clearly couldn’t find a needle in a stack of shaving mans cast off bristles!).

There are few times in life I am lost for words but even now, reminiscing over this traumatic visual experience, I can’t begin to convey any kind of coherent mutterings! The image is burnt to my retinas forever, no wonder I drink! Sometimes I think the daily commute is harder than a days work….

It’s pants…literally

Ever had one of those Marilyn Monroe moments where a gust of wind catches you off guard and before you can grab on for dear life your skirt is round your waist showing your pants to the world? Well, have I got some tales for you!

It was a warm day, a rarity in Scotland, so off I trot to work in a lovely floaty skirt and some nude tights. Just because its sunny doesn’t mean tights are omitted, I mean who voluntarily wants chub rub? (chub rub for those who don’t know is that lovely rubbing at the top of your thighs that makes you walk like you’ve pooped your pants!)

I near the office when someone I recognise from another department taps me on the shoulder and politely says:

You need to pull your skirt down at the back

Mortified, I grab my skirt only to realise it is completely tucked in to my back pack. Not only have I been showing the street my backside but it had actually been tucked up there since I had gotten off the train so a whole heap of commuters and everyone else in the train station had also seen my ass. Great day to wear a thong!

A few days later I am walking to the train station after work, the busiest time possible to navigate the streets of the city when another woman, again that I recognise from work (but not the same woman), taps me not the shoulder and, you guessed it, says:

Your dress is tucked in to your back pack

Once again there I am baring my backside to all and sundry! I have to work with these people and the worst bit is it has clearly been tucked in to my back pack since I left my desk! That means any number of colleagues that I work closely with got an unwarranted view of my once again thong toting ass through my nude tights.

I mean how unlucky can you be? Well I will tell you….

I obviously spent the next few weeks entirely paranoid checking my attire to ensure nothing was tucked anywhere it shouldn’t have been. This seemed to avert any further incidents until, yip you guessed it, one day I got blasé about the whole thing. I get half way to the office in the morning and I feel a breeze, I immediately panic, grab my skirt and realise that once again it is tucked up in my back pack.

So there you have it, not only have I shown the entire city and half my work colleagues my practically bare backside on one occasion, I have actually done this THREE times! Needless to say I now rarely wear any floaty items and when I do I triple check nothing is tucked where it shouldn’t be and only wear long coats that fully cover my butt! Its been a painful and mortifying lesson to have learnt.

Where it started..my first job

Upon graduating university I landed my first big exciting job! Ok it wasn’t big and it wasn’t exciting AND it turns out I was getting paid less per hour than my current role for a local sports stadium. However, it was remotely tied to my degree so off I went in to the big bad world.

As many of you big city workers will know, by far the easiest way to commute to a city centre workplace is by the ever reliant train service our country proudly operates. When I say the easiest, its a smidge cheaper and less stressful than driving but what I really mean is city centre parking is non existent unless your some big hot shot with your own parking space!

The daily commute, albeit monotonous, is an excellent opportunity to people watch or, in my case, be accosted by unsavoury characters.

It was a Tuesday night. Peak time train service home. For once I had left the office on time and I collapse onto the plastic train seat to enjoy the uncomfortable 50 minute journey home when I look up to see Glasgow’s finest has plonked himself across from me. I quickly glance away but its too late, he’s made eye contact and, regardless of the fact I am wearing headphones (which are meant to avoid these unwanted social interactions), he waves his hand at me to take my headphones out. I reluctantly remove one ear and he smiles a black half toothless grin and offers me a swig of his can of Tennents. Seriously? You have a missing front tooth, I can only imagine the floaters swimming in there. Obviously thats not the only thing stopping me, a million things are floating through my head but ultimately I am screaming (albeit internally) NO, JUST NO!!

I politely decline and attempt to put my headphone back in BUT, before I can pop it in he starts chatting. It is at this point in my life I decide I hate my mother for teaching me manners. However, my mannerable self wins and the headphone stays out. I ask no questions, in fact I don’t think I say a single word to the man other than ‘No thanks’ to his offer of a drink of his, likely luke warm, piss water.

Anyway, he clearly doesn’t pick up on social cues and starts to chat away like I am an old pal. He somewhat proudly tells me he is off to visit his ‘mrs’ in the women’s jail. She’s been banged up for attacking her cousin who stole a fag that she’d swept up from the bins outside the bookies! I don’t pretend to know the tobacco craving well but this seems a bit extreme! I pretend to be getting off at the next stop where I swiftly change carriages. I mean, I definitely don’t want to be caught in this man’s company, his ‘better half’ as he calls her (oh yea, clearly an upstanding pillar of the community) is obviously a psycho and I like my body scar free!

I take note to avoid the Tuesday peak service as gosh only knows what a second encounter would bring. A sweaty, I haven’t washed in a week and don’t own deodorant, hug? It really doesn’t bare thinking about.

Jakey 1 Me 0

How I got here

Where to begin!

I was born…joking

I reckon Vodka is to blame/thank. Which of these I am not yet sure but I think it surely must be the latter because who wants to blame it on the vodka?! (unless you have a really good reason like you peed on the cat…this isn’t something I have done, just to clarify, but I do know someone who has come close!)

It came to my attention that maybe I wasn’t an entirely normal human when people kept commenting on my escapades/stories with quotes like:

“You are hilarious”

When really I was just relaying how my morning had been. In my head a normal response to a mundane question. Apparently not!

How do you survive in life?

A standard comment from my long suffering husband who still doesn’t understand how I can fall over from standing still….it happens, get over it and move on!

You have a degree. In math? You?!

This comes of particular shock when my verbal dyslexia and attempts at synonyms enter a conversation (fun fact: I can’t say the word synonym and repeatedly give various versions of cinnamon before giving up. And so the name of this blog was born!)

All of this has cumulated in bringing me here to share it all with you. In the hope that maybe this really does have some sort of entertainment value and, above all, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I love to share my hilarious tales.

So lets do this….