On The Right Track?

Well I will say this for couples - they certainly take up less room on public transport. It’s not always what you want to look at but there is that redeeming feature. Those of you who have ever had to travel on trains for your commute to and from work will know that you can get quite desensitised to packing into metal carriages like sardines but its definitely not fun in the heat. And there will still be that small degree of distance from each of your fellow travellers that takes up space. Even if it’s that rigid posture that says you-touch-my-arse-buddy-and-you-are-so-dead.

But thinking about trains and the platforms you hang around on waiting for said trains, got me round to thinking - its all a bit like love and relationships really. Seriously. I mean you could be all ready to connect. With a person or maybe with a relationship. You get yourself together and you get to the train station only to find that the train is pulling away from the platform as you arrive. You’ve missed out. You’ve lost your chance. Things will not be going well for you today. Better luck next time.

Of course there can also be communication problems even when you think everything is fine. You’re there on time, but the train may pull up full to bursting with stressed-out commuters and you just know there is no room for you there. Please try again later. Or maybe the situation is ‘THE TRAIN TO. DESTINATION. HAS BEEN. CANCELLED. WE. APOLOGISE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE’. Highly impersonal and it’s beyond your control. Someone else has decided that you won’t be going anywhere for a while.

Then there are the times when you’re all ready to go but other things get in the way. ‘THE TRAIN TO. DESTINATION. IS DELAYED. BY APPROXIMATELY. TEN. MINUTES’. Not to mention ‘FOR SERVICES TO. DESTINATION. PLEASE CHANGE AT. DESTINATION A. FOR A CONNECTING BUS SERVICE TO. DESTINATION’. You might have your own personal schedule but life doesn’t always work out like that. You can’t always have what you want when you want it. And sometimes you have to go a lot of places you don’t necessarily want to before you get to where you’re really going. I’m sure love can be like that too.

Then there is the fact that some destinations sound a lot better than they actually are. For all those who don’t happen to know any better, ‘Campbelltown’ probably sounds like a really nice place. And have you ever noticed that ‘Museum’ sounds an awful lot like ‘New Zealand’ during peak hour at Central? I didn’t believe it at first but it really does and having been to both, I can tell you that Museum is not half as exciting.

So the next time you find yourself hanging around waiting for public transport that never runs on time and is fraught with problems, and while you’re cursing over maintenance, infrastructure and availability issues you have nothing to do with, you might want to contemplate the above. And if you’ve just missed the last train home, you might want to catch a taxi.