These Days

She screamed it at me on Thursday night but only after I’d absolutely had enough.

It started as a pretty ordinary train trip home.  I was sitting back engrossed in my book “Written in Time” and listening in the background to Sports Today on 3AW (gotta love Tunein Radio as an iPhone Ap).

We got to Box Hill and a couple of disheveled looking young ladies, and I lose the term lightly, got on and wandered up the carriage past me.  It wasn’t long until the voices were raised loud enough to not only interfere with my radio listening but distracting of my reading as well.

Like “young ladies” seem to do more often these days there was a lot of effin c’s and various other colourful phrases.  I picked up that the older looking slag was 28 and one of the others who also boarded the train but from a different door was 18.  The older one was yelling and screaming something about the younger one muttering about her under her breath.   When a few other people started to vacate that end of the carriage and move down past where I was sitting I turned around to see what was going on and saw the younger one seated with the older one standing above her blocking her in and leaning down screaming in her face.   They were both clearly, drunk, drug affected or both and as I watched it was suddenly on and a full blown cat fight started, the screaming and swearing continued and the hair pulling and scratching had started.

I had enough.  I took the earphones out and tucked them into my pocket, I asked the young girl opposite me to look after my pack and I went and grabbed the 28 year old from behind and pulled them apart.  Whilst I restrained her the other girl was ushered into another carriage by two other companions.

The two now separated physically I let the older one go and told her to sit down and shut up.

“You’re not a fucking copper,” she yelled in my face.

I turned walked away and sat back down.

“Do you know who I am?,” she screamed at the top of her voice.    ”I’m a member of the P…gill family!”  Spit flying from her mouth the stud on her tongue almost sticking up her nostril as she spat the vitriol at me.

“You’re face is burned into my brain.  You better watch your back!   You’re gonna end up fuckin dead!”

And for those who don’t know.   That statement about her family history alone says it all really and shows precisely why that “young lady” actually doesn’t really have much of a future.   There will be many more fights ahead for her, angry, bitter, full of a false pride in a family that has no respect at all in my world.   I wish her luck but reckon she’s more likely to end up in a gutter somewhere.

Incidentally, not one other person intervened.  They were all happy to sit there and ignore what was happening whilst a young girl, who may or may not have caused it in the first place, got the crap beaten out of her.  WTF is that all about.

A few weeks ago after attending a meeting in the city I caught a late night train home. That’s always an interesting experience because there are often drunken and drug addled people who also tend to travel around at night.

This particular night a bloke got on and it’s fair to say that he was under the weather. He confirmed it when he sat next to a young lady and started chatting to her admitting he’d just finished a long lunch with a client.

Now the train for me is somewhere I cocoon myself, relax and read a book, for the most part oblivious to things that go on around me. I’m not interested in other peoples conversations or hearing about their lives but occasionally there are sometimes things that are so distracting happening that the cocoon is breached. This bloke was one of those distractions.

The poor young girl next to him put up with being told about Sylvio Berlusconi and his marital exploits. Not content with discussing old news he proceeded to tell her his life story – he was a CPA and currently in charge of his practice because the boss was away; he did more than 300 BAS statements every quarter and been out to lunch with his largest client; he was widowed ten years ago when his wife died aged 50 and he was only 48 at the time; his three children, a thirty year old daughter and 28 and 25 year old sons still all lived at home; he was thinking of subdividing his block building a small two bedroom place on the front part and forcing his kids to move out; and on and on.

None of this was in the least bit interesting, I’d listened to enough drunks over the years to be less than inspired, and he was less interested in conversation than talking anyway. Try as I might I could not tune out. He grew up in a small country town called Drouin where Collingwood footballer Dale Thomas came from; life was different when he was a lad; and the drone continued through 13 raliway stations.

Unfortunately, there was track work going on and that meant that we had to change from a train and travel the last few stations by bus. Now, my cocoon in tatters, I did my best to avoid this bloke, but he sidled up to me and decided that it would be a good thing to talk about football until the bus arrived. So we did and when the bus finally did arrive I held back and let him get on first so I could choose where I wanted to sit that would allow me some peace and quiet. That worked until he saw a lady seated by herself in front of me and he decided that he could strike up a conversation with her. And then I learnt about her life as well – born in London, been in Australia for 30 years, divorced, living in a one bedroom flat and occasionally has a meal with the landlord who cooks for her, but the problem is he then expects her to reciprocate; lived in Darwin and Brisbane for years before moving to Melbourne; and so on. They had a great time together for those four stations.

Wednesday morning as I again was sitting reading my book and the train began to gradually fill I found my personal space invaded. There is an unwritten protocol on public transport that you spread out us much as possible and then gradually fill in the space as it becomes more crowded, but on this occasion despite there being plenty of empty seats this bloke sat right next to me and said good morning. I glanced up and found, much to my unease, the very same widowed father of three CPA who I had run across a few weeks ago.

So I buried my head in my book and he settled back to read the big paper until a young lady filled the seat opposite him whereupon he chose to strike up a conversation with her. This time the theme was cousins; Australia and England hate each other at cricket, but we’re cousins; New Zealand had an imperious batsman a few years ago called Martin Crowe and he happened to be the cousin of Russell Crowe although he wasn’t sure how old either of them were now; Australia and New Zealand hate each other at sport as well and would even compete heavily at tiddlywinks despite the fact that we’re cousins you know; and Australian fast bowler Bruce Reid, who also excelled at basketball as a youngster and played 100 games of AFL football as a Junior was actually the cousin of Kiwi batsman John Reid.

And on it went. Occasionally the young girl what mutter stuff like “Is that right” or “That’s amazing” whilst giving a stifled, forced giggle at his jokes. I tried to catch her eye and give her a knowing wink to let her know she wasn’t alone, but I don’t think she wanted to make eye contact with anyone else on the off chance that they would wreck her cocoon as well.