Friday, July 9, 2010

Essex and trains

I spend a lot of time on trains - today I'm in Essex and have just come back through a place called Calvedon. Of course this has now resulted in me singing this to the tune of Glaveston in my head...la la la Galveston oh Calvedon...that is neither a modern nor a particularly tuneful reference but I'm the one that's stuck with it so it's not harming anybody.

I've just been to Colchester, where I met some incredible people. I'm appealing to the general public for help in translating this info - I was sitting, minding my own business on a train platform in the sun when some one shouted 'Oi Yoshy'. I looked around for a small mario player, perhaps in a cart of some kind but there was none. I then heard 'Oi Yoshy howdja get ta Cowchesda?' and I looked towards the source of the noise.

Do you know what a guttersnipe is? Now I wasn't sure. But there the word was popping into my head, just like Galveston. Upon googling it now I see that it means;
1. A street urchin.
2. A person of the lowest class.
And while I'm not one to throw stones in glass houses, I can safely say that there are more innapropriate words for the source of the noise than the one my faithful brain threw my way.

The source of the noise was apparently talking to me so I replied that the next train to Colchester was in 20 minutes and it silenced itself. Once silenced it stopped the pram it was pushing in time to light a cigarette and moan that it wasn't allowed to smoke it on the platform - which it proceeded to do anyway.

C'est La Essex thinks I and got on the train.

Trains have been troubling me lately with their forceful terminology. The latest in a long line of bothering phrases is 'this train terminates here' which I think is a ghastly way to inform people that the train doesn't go any further along the country. Makes it sound as though anyone left in the carriage after 15 seconds is going to be gassed to death or strapped to the line for the train to perform some sort of highway abortion on it. Horrible.

I can only hope that language like that wasn't around in the times of Thomas The Tank Engine for I can think of nothing worse than some poor child being informed that -

'Henry pops his clogs here' or 'Gordon will scissor kick you 'til you die here'

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