Coaches

In general, I prefer to travel via coach than by train.

Lately I have found train carriages to be increasingly noisy places, with people yapping into mobile phones, kids running around, football fans having loud conversations about The Match and so on. It's often difficult to find a 'table seat' too, and the Carrolian logic behind ticket pricing, where a return fare can mysteriously cost more than a single has bemused me on many an occasion.

It was quite by accident that I found myself getting reacquainted with coaches, and was cheered to find them quieter, more comfortable and vastly cheaper than trains. The only downside was that they take longer to get to wherever it is you want to go, and may get caught up in traffic, but I consider that a fair transfer of risk given the advatantages of large comfortable leatherette seats and relative peace and quiet.

Better still, I actually enjoyed the unhurried pace of the coach. One has plenty of time to listen to an audio book or a number of podcasts and generally relax. Add a bottle of mineral water and a blanket, and it can be very pleasant indeed, especially if one is travelling through the countryside an hour before sunset during the summer.

Earlier today I travelled back from Heathrow to my home city, and all the advantages of the coach I've noted above were in evidence. However, a salient disadvantage did arise: if you don't want to be in the vicnity of the other occupants of the coach you cannot simply move to a different carriage as you can in a train.

Ms Rhapsody9 and I took to our seats on our coach earlier today, and a few minutes into the journey we noticed a rather horrid smell. Ms rhapsody wondered if it was perhaps a dead squirrel that had got trapped in the wheel arches, or perhaps something terrible had happened in the little toilet at the back. It was arguably worse: the young tracksuited chap behind us had started munching on a tube of Sour Cream and Chive Pringles, which, in the confines of the coach, smelt like salted baby-sick.

We moved to another seat at the first stop to get away from it, only to find ourselves sitting in front of an old chap who clearly had some terrible disease. Every 20 seconds he'd ejaculate a terrible shotgun of a cough, followed by a plegmy gurgle and what sounded like an attempt to dislodge his adenoids by sniffing very, very hard indeed.

After one other stop, we moved seats again, only to find history repeating itself. The chap behind us this time had a milder form of the lurgi, but the woman across the aisle was also afflicted, and so we were being accosted on two fronts.

I was very tempted to telephone the local health authorities and warn them that a plague bus was on its way to the city, but the reception was a bit patchy, so I didn't. In any case, I was glad to get off that bus and into the fresh air.