Hell is just a phone call away

A Japanese girl bleats into her phone. She might be calling her family back home, she might be calling a friend within the UK-either way, there is scarce need for the handset. Decibel levels hover around those of jet plane as the nasal vowels and quick fire sentences take flight, crash-landing on innocent ear-drums around the carriage.

English exasperation, limited to silent tutting and head-shaking, floats around the train; the young lady continues to jabber into the handset, utterly oblivious to this customary display of disapproval.

My nerve endings at this point are frazzled, burnt and grated until there is nothing left.
I am tired, therefore prickly and irritable, but had I been bright eyed and bushy-tailed, I would still be somewhat aggrieved by the human megaphone sat behind me. Why is it some people find it necessary to use a train journey as an opportunity to screech and bellow, to pour their troubles down a phone line at an inexplicable volume, polluting the thoughts of everyone who has the misfortune to share a carriage?

It seems as though when a phone comes into contact with an ear, a protective bubble is conjured around the head. The caller cannot be heard by anyone else, except the poor soul being enlightened on the other end of the line. Anything can be discussed; period problems, family strife, recent or near-future infidelity, dietary issues. The unfortunate few seated nearby (in the case of the Japanese girl, anyone on the entire train) are forced to listen to an outburst of private emotion that would usually be reserved for a confessional box or therapist’s sofa. If, God forbid, one were to volunteer an opinion on the subjects being discussed, they would be met with a bewildered expression, as if to say ‘How do you know about my private life? Have you been listening in? How rude’ before being shot down with some expletive-ridden diatribe roughly translated as ‘Mind your own business.’

I would mind my own business, if my business wasn’t smashed, shattered and kicked out of my head by this all-consuming octopus of white noise that is your business.

Admittedly, it is sometimes necessary to take a phone call whilst aboard a train. A business call, for example, or the obligatory call to let your mother/lover know you are coming home. But these calls are generally quick and to the point (depending on the mother/lover in question- some see conciseness as an impossible dream, and enjoy meandering around conversations at their own frustrating pace.) They do not command the attention of all the passengers around them. They yield very little private information, except perhaps what the caller should expect for dinner that evening. These are the phone calls I can abide, and the raison d’etre of the mobile phone.

Mobiles were invented so people could communicate outside the confines of a house; they are not an excuse to bring private, intensely personal ramblings onto public transport, and then turn the volume dial to ‘deafening’. Mercifully, these harrowing, begrudgingly-communal phone calls can be cut short as signal is momentarily lost.

I am extremely grateful for tunnels.