Proud of Society

A new sensation 

Bit ashamed of myself - not a new sensation 

An incident at the station

St Pancras, platform 13, the Faversham train was delayed. We all had to get off a broken train after a ‘reboot’ had failed. 

Passengers were dashing to Platform 13 because we all knew that the carriages would quickly fill up. People were getting impatient 

The replacement train had only six carriages and a small cluster of folk had already gathered around each of the train doors by the time I got there

A forty something, shortish guy with close cropped hair was repeatedly hitting the button to open the door with his thumb without success - in terms of getting the doors to open.

As he was doing this he was swearing quite loudly in frustration 

One of my fellow travellers took issue with this and quite politely asked him to curb the strong language for the sake of the children present

Our button thumbing co-traveller turned to the guy and advised him to ‘back off’ 

The guy behind said he didn’t want any trouble but pointed out that there seemed to be no reason for the aggressive behaviour 

The aggressive behaviour continued 

At this point, the young lady next to me became involved 

She was twenty something, a student, quietly spoken and quite rational, though she became increasingly upset

“Excuse me” she said, “excuse me, you can’t talk to people like that”

“Shatt ap” said the oik 

She didn’t. She continued to berate him in a very restrained way.

He continued to advise her to “be quiet”

“Are you going to fight me?” She asked. “You want to fight him (the original complainant), will you fight me too? “

The first guy said something else, which I couldn’t hear and got more abuse.

The young woman went away and came back with a rail official.

“Here he is, please arrest him for assault”

The protagonist was quite quiet by now

“Madam, I am not the police, I cannot arrest anyone”

“Can you call the police then please, I’m a law student, this man has assaulted me”

Finally the doors opened. Our oik became a gentleman and started encouraging people to get on the train ahead of the rest of us.

The Dad behind him had found more courage and was gently berating the oik for being childish 

The threats had stopped by this time as we were taking our seats, the oik was grinning to appear self assured, which by now he clearly was not

As we sat down, there was announcement to the effect that the train was awaiting clearance to depart

There were several further, identical announcements as we sat there for a further ten minutes 

I noticed that the young woman was still on the platform, clearly waiting for someone 

Also noticed that our angry man was observing her nervously through the window

He got off the train

From where I was sitting I didn’t see what happened next.

The chap next to me summised that the train was waiting for the law to arrive, he got up and informed the train staff that the culprit had left the scene and we were shortly on our way.

My neighbour informed me that the police had indeed arrived on the platform and collared the swearer 

So what was this? 

A waste of Police time? Maybe, but maybe not. The Bill have, I’m sure, much more pressing issues to deal with. However I’ve been on both sides of this kind of anti social behaviour and  know that it’s not acceptable 

Especially now. Yes, the millennial generation probably do have a sense of empowerment that my generation do, for the most part, not have. Like in so many situations, most of us close to this little scenario understood what was happening and said nothing

The young woman took action, maybe a little over the top, but I imagine our oik learned a lesson today.

Hopefully things like this will help us all in the long run.