h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is with a startling and increasing sense of alarm that I realise that I probably ought not bother with trains any longer.

My train was ten minutes late today. Well, the announcer at the station said it would be ten minutes late, but he only meant ten minutes late *arriving*. Add to that the extra three minutes before the train left, and I was frustrated and displeased to realise that I was On-Time for work, rather than Early.

I always plan to be Early to work, because being On-Time actually translates as being Late. This is because the lifts in my office building are grossly inadequate and have stolen whole minutes of my life, and also because of the sign-on procedure which seems frivolous but is -- I am assured -- wholly necessary. Then I must retreive my headset, fill my water bottle and then ask my supervisor if I am required on the phones yet. You get this a lot at call-centres: if there are no calls, there are workers being paid for nothing, and their time is being wasted. But at least you get money for your time.

Regardless of my work-related woes (of which there are many, but that's another chapter), the train making me On-Time was not an isolated incident. My last train experience -- a mere 3 days earlier -- was an even greater miff-maker.

Now, a cynic may be content to say that this is all because the train system is terrible, and it's tempting to agree. I think something more than mere poor service is afoot, however.

The train journey from Wollongong to Sydney is supposed to be short and comfortable, and there are at least two things wrong with this statement. It takes roughly one and a half hours, whereas you can make the drive in less than an hour, and some studious genius has worked overtime to ensure that the seating provided affords as little comfort as possible. Also, I previously worked at a hotel in Sydney, and made this train journey twice a day -- once in the evening to Sydney, then a hard nights' work (graveyard shifts are something I do not recommend), before another journey home again. Suffice to say, I despise this journey, and a strange consequence of this is that I absolutely must remove my shoes if I am to make the journey.

On this particular day, however, I kept my shoes on. This was in kindness to my friends, who were my travelling companions. We were travelling to Sydney to see the "Livid" music festival, and thought we had planned our day well. However, it was just after I boarded the train that the conductor informed all aboard that we must change at Hurstville, due to track works. Hurstville station is only 15 minutes away from Sydney Central station, but only if you're on an express train. We were on an express train, but being forced to change at Hurstville also meant taking an all-stations to Sydney Central.

This could have been neglected and forgotten, owing to the excitement of the day ahead, but our journey back was something of a discomfort, to say the least. It would have been fine, except that we had to wait at Central station for the final train to take us to Hurstville, so that we could board the final train to Wollongong and beyond. This was right before midnight, and is an inconvenience that no one deserves so very late. At midnight, all you want to do is collapse on the train, sleep until you arrive at your station, then walk home, trying to pretend that you never woke up and you'll go back to sleep without any hassles. Especially when this train is not an express, and stops at every single stop, thereby extending a journy of 1.5 hours to 2.5.

Even worse, we had planned to take the train that left an hour earlier (which was an express!), although we had a problem. One of our party was unaccounted for, and we couldn't well leave her behind. So we decided to be really smart and wait where our collective powers of deduction determined she would be at a certain time. It was brilliant stuff, but doing so meant missing that early express train. Still, our chivalry certainly would have paid off, except that we didn't factor in the possibility that we had been told the wrong thing, and that she had in fact left early to catch the express train. (She was really sorry, though.)

All this is tolerable, except when you're chafing badly. We-ell, it was my own fault, I guess. I saw 3 great bands perform, and I moshed for 2 of them, and although the weather was fine, I did a lot of sweating. I should have worn better 'chafe-retardant' clothing to begin with, but that is a mistake that I had to live with. To paint a picture, it is 3 days later and I still feel some after-effects of that chafing. In other words, if I did too much extra walking, I would have been grinding bones. It *really* hurt.

The other thing I noticed is that no one else seemed to be chafing badly, except for one of our party. So we suffered together, which was fine, but no one else that I observed walked strangely. There wasn't anyone adjusting their pants, or walking the bow-legged walk of a cowboy, or even tottling along in that self-conscious way a person has when they're trying not to look like someone suffering a bad case of chafing.

Try and get a taxi after a huge public event, with some 50,000 visitors. Not everyone drives, and while buses are provided (inadvisable), the best option is a taxi. By this time, we knew we had missed our early express train, so we had plenty of time to get to the railway station. The solution? Why, we'll walk along the road and hail a taxi. So that's what we did, despite my protestations, and the far more urgent protestations of my aching thighs...

The entire rant goes on like this for some time. Don't be fooled, though: I had a great time on Sudnay, despite some of the shortcomings surrounding the events, but that's because I'm focusing on those shortcomings, rather than the excellent music of the day. Even so, it makes me wonder about trains. Why would they do this to me? These inconveniences only seem to occur when I have a valid reason to not be inconvenienced. When I am in no rush or urgent situation, the trains run smoothly and on-time, ferrying me to the destination with time to spare that I could otherwise waste in my office-building's lifts. It's cruel what they did to a chafing man last Sunday, and I think it's equally cruel to make me On-Time for work.