Silence is a dangerous game...
Mar. 10th, 2005 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaLast night, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wimble and I pottered down to London to see the second half of the His Dark Materials stage play (of which a proper review will be fothcoming when I have some time.)
The journey home raised a strange question of what kind of behaviour is acceptable on trains.
As the train waited in, then pulled out of, Paddington Wimble and I were chattering vaguely about some stuff he was working on. We continued to chatter vaguely about a range of things as the train trundled into the night.
A little before Didcot, a bloke sitting near turned to me half-turned his head towards me and growled "<.mumble>... had to put up with an hour of this already". The three other people sitting at his table laughed in an agreeing kind of way. Being a paranoid sort, I leapt to the conclusion that he was sick of hearing a conversation about database queries, Bourne shells and the like.
Now, I don't think that, if you're eavesdropping on someone else's conversation you really have the right to complain about the content. Anyway, I thought, he probably wasn't referring to us at all, I'm sure it's just paranoia on my part. Wimble and I continued to prattle about various things til the train reached Oxford.
By this time, us two and the table of four were the only people remaining in the carriage. As we stood up to wait for the doors to open, one of the other four said "Let's go this way [ie towards the other door], they're still talking".
"Can you believe it ?" replied another. "They're still talking."
They sounded actually quite pissed off about it, too.
Now, I don't believe we were talking particularly loudly. We were just chatting, normal volume, like you would do on the train to pass the time. Is this particularly unusual behaviour ? Being able to maintain a conversation, on a variety of topics, for around 70 minutes doesn't strike me as particularly arduous.
If I get on the tube - the bastion of silent travel - with someone, I chat to them. No one seems to take this as terribly amiss. Sometimes I talk to strangers on the tube, which scares them, but that's mostly why I do it.
And now I'm confused. I know I'm talkative. I'd actually regard that, mostly, as an asset. And I'd regard the other people on the train as rather rude and unreasonable. After the first remark, I paid vague attention to them, and they were making occasional remarks - certainly nothing like the sustained conversation we were pursuing.
In general, would you get annoyed by people near you on a train, or bus, or in a queue chatting ? Am I unintentionally pissing off thousands every day ?
wimble and I pottered down to London to see the second half of the His Dark Materials stage play (of which a proper review will be fothcoming when I have some time.)The journey home raised a strange question of what kind of behaviour is acceptable on trains.
As the train waited in, then pulled out of, Paddington Wimble and I were chattering vaguely about some stuff he was working on. We continued to chatter vaguely about a range of things as the train trundled into the night.
A little before Didcot, a bloke sitting near turned to me half-turned his head towards me and growled "<.mumble>... had to put up with an hour of this already". The three other people sitting at his table laughed in an agreeing kind of way. Being a paranoid sort, I leapt to the conclusion that he was sick of hearing a conversation about database queries, Bourne shells and the like.
Now, I don't think that, if you're eavesdropping on someone else's conversation you really have the right to complain about the content. Anyway, I thought, he probably wasn't referring to us at all, I'm sure it's just paranoia on my part. Wimble and I continued to prattle about various things til the train reached Oxford.
By this time, us two and the table of four were the only people remaining in the carriage. As we stood up to wait for the doors to open, one of the other four said "Let's go this way [ie towards the other door], they're still talking".
"Can you believe it ?" replied another. "They're still talking."
They sounded actually quite pissed off about it, too.
Now, I don't believe we were talking particularly loudly. We were just chatting, normal volume, like you would do on the train to pass the time. Is this particularly unusual behaviour ? Being able to maintain a conversation, on a variety of topics, for around 70 minutes doesn't strike me as particularly arduous.
If I get on the tube - the bastion of silent travel - with someone, I chat to them. No one seems to take this as terribly amiss. Sometimes I talk to strangers on the tube, which scares them, but that's mostly why I do it.
And now I'm confused. I know I'm talkative. I'd actually regard that, mostly, as an asset. And I'd regard the other people on the train as rather rude and unreasonable. After the first remark, I paid vague attention to them, and they were making occasional remarks - certainly nothing like the sustained conversation we were pursuing.
In general, would you get annoyed by people near you on a train, or bus, or in a queue chatting ? Am I unintentionally pissing off thousands every day ?
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The World Has Gone Mad (Part MMV, Chapter III)
Date: 2005-03-11 03:29 pm (UTC)Maybe they were just Londoners.
Such experiences are indeed soul-tarnishing in a low-grade fashion.
One irksome London Transport experience I had involved being temporarily stranded in Tulse Hill station (now you know that the story isn't going to get any better...). It was deserted, but I always carry a book, so no probs. I sat down to wait for a train back to civilisation and after some time a girl came onto the platform. Of every seat that she could have chosen to sit on to await her train, she chose the one right next to me. She then got out her mobile and commenced to have a Dom Joly-style bellowing conversation with her mate (this is shockingly common). I didn't feel like moving and couldn't even be arsed to 'tsk!' although I couldn't very well not hear her on account of having functioning ears. I really wasn't listening, at least not voluntarily. Honest!
Nonetheless, I was shocked to suddenly hear her say, "Yeah, well, I can't really speak to you, 'cos I'm sat next to this weirdo at the station and she seems a bit interested in what I'm saying." Gah! It's not even as if I could correct her arrogant misapprehension as that I had the slightest interest in what she might have been saying, as that would have meant that I had at least listened to her having accused me of eavesdropping, so she got me coming and going.
Maybe the same people who don't quite get the idea of conversations don't quite get the idea of the absorbed silence of someone reading a book as opposed to being fascinated by their mobile telephone and word puzzle-oriented lives. Maybe we come from parallel dimensions...