Trains operating in the South West are full of weirdoes. The trains that I get on from Bristol, in particular those that pass through Weston-Super-Mare, are densely populated with odd bods and eccentrics. Today, my girlfriend and I are going to Taunton and we’re riding the Great Western all the way.
Within seconds of me sitting down on the train, a little man with rodenty teeth and fish-breath squeezes in next to me. He has eight carrier bags with him, each filled with an array of unusual objects. It is necessary to point out that he has not been on a shopping spree; this is not some yuppie we’re talking about, but a bachelor of unsavoury habit. It is more likely that he is moving the contents of his bedsit or completing a mission for the voice in his head.
Somehow this tiny man manages to pile each of the bags in turn up on top of his miniature form until all I can see of him from between an Asda and Poundland carrier bag are his buck teeth and one twitchy eye. A few moments later, the conductor walks down the aisle pushing past the man which forces him to shift slightly in his seat. A Boots’ bag filled with what look like wrapped presents falls unceremoniously onto my shoulder. I look towards him to see his eye blink twice in quick succession before he jerks to his left and the bag takes its rightful place resting on his temple.
There is a woman in her seventies on the train somewhere behind me; she is asking the carriage as a whole if they have a mobile phone that she can use. She’ll pay, she insists. I daren’t turn to look in case buckaroo next to me decides to launch his load once and for all. After an awkward silence and a few muttered, ‘No credit, ‘Only texts’ etc, a lady’s voice, the type of voice unafraid of infirm minds, pipes up, “You can borrow mine, love.”
I imagine that she now stretches out her arm with the phone towards the woman which elicits the following response:
“Oh, no good giving it to me, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it. I never used one in my life, dear. You dial it for me, will ya,” she says.
The lady takes the phone, dials the number, and passes the mobile back to the old woman,
“How do I use it?” the old woman screeches, clearly panicked by the phone’s presence in her hand, unwelcome like a fresh turd.
“Just speak into it and hold it to your ear.”
Several long seconds go by.
“It’s no good. It’s just a voice saying some number or other. I can’t hear it; can’t get the number. No good. I can’t hear it. I need to call the number. You do it.”
With patience seemingly and miraculously untried, the phone’s owner takes the mobile back, dials the same number again, takes a pen from her bag, writes down the number, then calls said number and hands it back to the old woman.
“Hello Jean. I’m on a train. It’s a late one; late departure from Bristol so I won’t be in until about half hour or so after I was gonna be there. I’m on one of those mobiles; a lady’s on the train.”
She passes the phone back to the lady, stating, “It was just a message machine. Do you have change of a fiver?”
The lady politely refuses the offer of money and a blissful silence descends. The normal ones in the carriage breathe a sigh of relief as the tension of the scene dissipates; the odd bods continue to try and fit coke bottles in their ears so they can itch their brains. Then a phone starts to ring; everyone knows whose it is and who it is for. The lady’s voice, somewhat bemused, beginning to show signs of cracking, inevitably says, “It’s for you.”
Finally, the train pulls into Taunton station. The sun is out in Somerset today and I suck it deep into my lungs, trying to push out the stress of the journey, replace it with springtime and the scent of optimism. The walk into Taunton town centre is one lined with pigeon guano and sex shops yet still the sun shines.
The first shop we go in is a two-storey junk shop. I spot some records on the floor and flick through them as my girlfriend toes things that she’d never touch with her hands. I get up of the floor and turn towards her. Just to the left of her shoulder is the head of a fox, stuffed, forever frozen in an aggressive snarl. I look at it and think of blood. On one of the fox’s teeth, a large bell hangs. On the top of a display case next to the fox is a clown head rotten with age, with the fibre glass peeling and exposing bluey-veins of wire. There are the obligatory dolls with eyes rolled back and limbs violently dislocated. I ask the owner a question; it is three minutes before he responds by which point I don’t care about the answer, I just want to leave. This place must slowly erode what you take as normal.
Outside, the sun is still shining, and the city centre is far more ordinary. There are high street shops and buses. As nice as it seems, we decide to follow the river out of Taunton to the countryside. After ten minutes or so, the scrap merchants and garages give way to fields of rabbits and hedgerow twitching with little birds. The city swans hardened by dodging coke cans and swallowing piss are replaced by pearly white swans that talk about the sensuality of John Donne amongst the reeds.
It’s all very pleasant out here and I feel myself relaxing, leaving the call centre and the boredom of my 9-5 life behind. It is at this precise moment that my bladder decides to quadruple in size. I look around me for a place to piss, but there are just enough dog walkers and farm houses on the horizon to rule out pissing in the open. There is no choice but to struggle on.
After a while the greenery disappears and a main road bisects the country lane. Where there are roads, there are toilets, I think. And yes, sure enough, in the distance, I see a garden centre. I near run to the complex of polythene tents and hot houses. However, after five minutes of walking through aisles of seeds and shrubs, avoiding the water features, and commenting loudly on potatoes to explain my presence in this place, I succumb to the fact that there is no toilet.
The next ten minutes, I don’t really remember. There is a partridge in a field, a dog that can open gates, a house with shutters, a bridge and a hill to the village of Bishop’s Hull. And as all good villages must, it has an old pub with toilets that stink but oh, yes, a toilet all the same. I struggle through half a pint, mocking my now floppy bladder. A dormant hangover from a week old pub crawl rumbles into existence and I feel decidedly peaky. It’s going to be a long way back to Taunton.
Taunton is an altogether different place when we return. Walking up through the park past the castle, there are a group of young teenagers stood swigging litre bottles of vodka in plain view. There is an omnipresent smell of sweat and marijuana; everyone is screeching and stumbling through the streets. Three skinheads bundle past me. One turns to his mate who has just thrown a dog-end to the floor, “I’ll fucking kick your ‘ed in if you ever chuck a spliff like that again, there were at least two more tokes on that you prick.” The sun may be shining, the sensimilla burning, but this is no premature summer of love, this is irrefutably, undeniably, the West Country line, insanity warmed through and high.
