Shhhh

Some trains in the UK have a 'quiet' coach. Within its supposed cocoon of silence, the passenger, or should I say customer to use the modern jargon, should be able to relax, untroubled by tinny iPod headphones or mobiles with jaunty tunes.

Of course this admonition of 'shhhh' is totally ignored by those sorry dregs of humanity who lack respect for their fellow man and are too lazy to go out to the vestibule between the coaches. No, for them, the broadcasting of their intimate call to the mistress arranging a little bit of 'how's your father?' later, followed by the thinly apologetic excuse to the wife - 'working late, dear' - is for us all to hear. Makes men of them, I suppose.

However the vocal garbage of these cretins is as nothing compared to the train announcements. At every stop, and there are nine or ten between Evesham and London, a weary-sounding female voice goes through a litany of tedium concerning what company it is, what service it is, what to do during the expected crash, where the buffet is, where first-class accommodation resides, the position of the family coach and also that of the quiet coach. She then procedes to list what can't be done in the quiet zone. Unfortunately that doesn't include making repetitive, loud and banal announcements. I timed her outpouring once; it lasted 1 minute, 48 seconds. And you get one at every stop.

All this is grist to the mill to an old reactionary like myself. Technology for technology's sake. I used to be able to get on a train and travel without any on-board announcements whatsoever. Also I got to where I wanted to be, often, strangely enough, on time. While on the train there was nothing that important that I needed to communicate it instantly. If I wanted entertainment, I read a book, an essentially quiet mode of passing the time with only the gentle swishing sound of a page turning. A real human would pass through now and again, dressed in a natty uniform, and remind us that we needed to be in the front five coaches if we wanted to get off at Evesham. No disembodied voice warned us of the dire consequences of leaning out of the window, of opening the door before the train had stopped or the perils of leaving your belongings behind. As an educated person, you just knew these things. And if you didn't know the first two, then it was one less idiot in the gene pool.