Late-Night Train Travel

There’s nothing quite like the solemnity of a late night train, as the doors bleep and flash their willingness to open to a baron, silent carriage that is simply waiting for the next station with heavy lids and blurry eyes.

The rumble of movement subsides and gives a brief moment of stillness in the night. A lone passenger decides to depart and sparks into life the sole event reliable enough to stir you from your delicate state of half-sleep; the invigorating snap of alertness that comes from the chill of the evening air tickling your ankles as your gently warmed microcosm is thoughtlessly bitten into by the inky blackness.

The muting of announcements and the subsidence of the hubbub of daytime travel, paired with the foetal rocking and gentle vibrations through the sombre darkness outside pushes us all into a state of drowsiness, while we desperately cling to consciousness, dreading the moment we emerge from sleep – eleven stops past home – at the end of the line with no locomotion until the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Despite my unrelenting disappointment of Sunday-service trains, the experience of dozing through the coastal countryside is a somewhat comforting one. The familiarity of the obscure station stops and the knowing feeling of what is still to come makes the journey infinitely easier to stand. Especially when I have unusual picnics to feast upon.

I also saw this on the Stephen Merchant Amazon page, any fans of the radio shows and podcasts will surely join me in a chuckle. (Bottom left, click for higher resolution)

Is It Weird to Eat a Scotch Egg on a Train?

Yet another marathon journey traversing a disappointingly small portion of the southern coast in an unreasonably long period of time was the focus of my day, but this time I’d a fairly substantial food parcel packed to distract my attentions from the hours of travel.

As I sat on my second of three trains after eloping from my second of two buses as Littlehampton, I cracked open my Northiam Dairy Live Creamy Fruit Yoghurt and began to question the appropriateness of my selection of scotch eggs, cherry tomatoes, yoghurt and creamy coleslaw that my ever-doting yet somewhat-erratic mother had thrust upon me before my quest to Dorset.

I have always felt, through primary and secondary school – as I would, day in day out, dig into my unchanging sandwich, crisps and biscuit – that a packed lunch should be wholly consumed with nothing but the natural-born implements we are blessed with. The requirement of a fork, knife or spoon elevates that particular snack to being paired with either dining at home or in a professional establishment where implements are easily accessed and cleaned away. Kiwi fruits, breakfast cereals of any kind, and liquid-based foodstuff, or yoghurt and coleslaw – as I, for some reason, had ought to remain in these safe havens.

I feel it is important to travel light, so to carry unnecessary, un-disposable tools with you seems counterintuitive. It might make for happy eating, but it most certainly does not make for sensible travel. A light, uncluttered satchel is definitely the way forward to a happy journey.

My incognito consumption also drew my attention to another issue with this form of eating; it simply feels weird. I found myself popping my head above the seats to check if anyone was around, stuffing as much as I could into my mouth before anyone had the chance to get near; so desperately keen that my peculiar meal was to go unnoticed by my fellow passengers that the entire experience was ruin for me.

The peach. That’s just occurred to me. Bloody peaches.

The only safe place to enjoy the sweet flesh of a good, juicy, ripe peach is leaning over a sink, ready to rinse your hands and head after your delicious treat. And it has to be kept at that – a treat. One cannot make this a regular habit, for risking familiarity with this system and becoming tempted to test it on other foods with a high rating on the mess-spectrum.

It is of the utmost importance that we resist this urge to roll this technique out past the delicate, fleshy fruits. Lest we risk jeopardising the future of developed society as restaurants employ the use of bidets instead of tables – the tap ever-ready to spray your soiled features with a cleansing and refreshing dowsing of tap water they’d happily pass off as bottled and charged £2 for.

Despite the impending doom western society faces thanks to my hypothetical situation, I was still travelling with my hodgepodge picnic.

Scotch eggs are such a strange thing to even conceive. The fungal texture of the egg paired with its sulphurous odour is enough to put off some of the most world-weary eaters, yet the Scotch decided to add to the peculiarity by wrapping it in a thick layer of mysterious sausage meat, breadcrumbs and deep frying.

People of the East and tribal jungle-dwellers eat insects and have strange delicacies, but few go so far as this odd concoction in textures, flavours and the mixture of ingredients – spanning from a failed poultry ovum to arbitrary cuts of pig.

And yet, I found myself sinking my teeth into the monstrously eclectic mix on a Southern Railway train from Littlehampton to Southampton, coming to the conclusion that – despite its distinctly compact and clean consumption – it was very much not suitable for this place. This particular food must be eaten at home, this such wonder should not even be sampled at a restaurant.

A Scotch egg ought to be an inherently private indulgence and I, for one, shall never again taste the eggy, meaty, greasy delight in public, as long as I can have control over my consumption of food.