The Journey Home (by sarah)
"I've hard road to travel and a ruff, ruff way to go..."
Ok so Sunday did not see the smoothest of ways home for me - I started in Gants Hill looking out over London from Clare's gorgous flat. I had been unable to sleep - we'd obviously gone to bed late anyway having chatted half the night away and looking at her photos of Tia Land but more than that my mind raced with ideas of paintings to paint from the songs we'd sung during the day.
Anyway after a couple of cuppas she walked me to the station - I was sad that I still wasn't going to see the kittens that are in another friends house in the area but got to the station in plenty of time and felt good about going home to get stuff done.
The journey across London was fine with a cute little girl keeping everybody entertained on the Hammersmith and City Line and my train was on time at Paddington. But I had 2 changes instead of the none/one.
So making sure I had the correct seat reservation in my hand I moved with the crowd to the train and boarded - and there was bedlam - people arguing and being confused about seat reservations. A couple where confronting a man in orange and yellow robs with flowers around his neck and paint on the bridge of his nose. He moved once he understood it was their seat behind but they where still fussing and blocking things up so I explained it was on their ticket and on the seat and stuff and then it turned out they where upset the man had moved to another reserved seat.
But they had not told him this! And I wasn't entirely happy with how they had said it was their seats I know there was lots of people and it was busy and stuff but a little patients helps - they werent a hundred percent sure of how the reservation system worked either.
Anyway I could just see what was going to happen to this guy he would keep getting slightly annoyed people moving him on so I explained to him about the white tickets and he thanked me - he hadn't known and he went off to find an intagged seat.
Then a bunch of youngish Americans got on (the dude in the robes was from America too San Francisco) - I have to confess it was a very diverse group and I would not have thought they were all together but they where but obviously something had gone wrong one of their seats hadn't got its ticket sticking out of the top so an Austrialian had sat in it thinking it was free!
They were trying to sort this out when a shirty lady told them to move in no uncertain terms and I thought to myself - Aren't we British supposed to be polite? Aren't we supposed to be the nation of queuers? And why is it all the foriegn people who are being tourists and spending money here bulstering our economy are being a lot nicer over confusion of a system they can't really be expected to understand becuase - well its the British rail network and it doesn't work properlly.
Anyway - to my suprise I butted in again only a little bit and stuff got sorted - trueth is it was too many people for the space :/ As trains towards this part of the country were bneing few and far between.
Anyway I settled back for the 40 odd minutes only to find my head phones had broken so had no music.
At Reading it turned out there was a bus to Swindon and not a train and that my ticket wouldn't let me out of the barrier and the only staff memeber was the guy letting people in through the barriers and he wouldn't let me out. With 2 minutes to go and no idea where the 'front' of the station and the waiting bus was I was being to panic but a staff memeber appeared, let me through and looked at me like an idiot when I asked the way to the bus.
But I got there before they started letting people onboard. This was becuase it was slightly delayed.
I had not taken my pain killers due to the stomache pains I was getting but these turned out to be the standard womens thing which was one of the reasons getting to the bus had been so tight in the first place.
Bus sits hurt my back far worse than the train - this is why I don't take the coach - a lady was also sitting next to me so I couldn't stretch out.
When we got to Swindon and she stood up - it turned out she had sat in chewing gum - ooowe yuck! She hadn't noticed so I tapped her and gave her a tissue not that it helped much and then came the next bit of my strangly eventful journey.
I got on the train at Swindon though there seemed to be a little bit of confussion as to which plateform etc... and the train announcements where not coming out onto the plateform and so where muffled nonsense.
But everyone else on board was execting it to go to Cheltenham, Stroud etc... and I so I phoned Al and he set off to meet me in Stroud. And the departure time came and went and we sat there and sat there and sat there and there where no announcements and then about 40 minutes later when people had started shouting on the plateform at the staff they informed us there was no driver and it was going to a 45 minute wait until one arrived.
Then it turned out a little train was due to go to through to all the same stations in 15 minutes instead so with a bit of shoe horning and the upsetting of a large family who had sat in the bit where wheel chairs and that go where told to move so bikes could come on board - this ment some of the kids ended up sitting the opposite end of the train to the perants which the kids werent happy with.
Alot of the people had been on the bus and the over crowded Reading train and tempures were fraying abit - including my own though I ended up in a nice conversation with a girl from York.
And we sat and sat and then we were off and finiallly I got into Stoud where Al and Jean had obviously been for while :/
It is things like this though that make me want to bang everyones heads together - things would have been far more pleasent from the outset if there had not been pushy arogant people (or disgusting cretins who put chewing gum on top of coach seats!).
There isn't really a point to this post I just felt the need to write about the journey.
Mon 13th Jul 2009 6:00 am 
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By Ella, Mon 13th Jul 2009 @ 11:22 am
There's a school of thought that says that people whether people do good or bad actions depends far more on the circumstances than the persons morals. There's been fascinating experiments done with children where they measured whether children cheated in a test. Before the experiment the teachers picked out the 'bad' kids who they thought would cheat. They found that all the kids would cheat, but they would cheat in different situations and only if they though they would get away with it.
There's another experiment I like, this one done with trainee preists. Basically, you get four groups of preists and get them to write an essay. Half of them have to write an essay on 'The Good Samaritun' the other half on another bible story. Then you send them across campus to read their essay to some examiner/bigwig. You tell half the trainee preists to hurry as 'they're late' and you say nothing to the other one. Then, on the priest's path you put a researcher, 'passed out' pretending to be someone who was injured or unwell. Apparently, the main factor over whether the priests would stop and tend the man (despite the fact that preists in general are supposed to try and be good and help people) was whether they were late. Seeding their minds by making them thing about the parable of the good Samaritan didn't help. The late preists even stepped over the unconscious man, gripping their essay, with no thought for irony.
There's more experiments, such as the one where you can get ordinary people to act like sadists simply by making them prison guards or the one where people would torture another person just because they're told to by someone in authority.
So, really, you can design a lot of human behaviour by modifying the surroundings. And, the long distance train service (especially the one between winch and reading) is designed to cause conflict. They've shrunk the size of the train and filled it with reservations. I've noticed that as soon as people see that there aren't many seats, their behaviour changes from amenable and polite to people competing over scarce resources. I bet the 'pushy arrogant' people would have been more pleasant (although perhaps still arrogant) had they seen lots of seats.
By Clare, Mon 13th Jul 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Sorry luv, didn't know you didn't have much sleep at all, I hope it wasn't the sofabed! Jeez at the eventful journey though, just shows you how rubbish our transport system is really. xx