The passenger

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He paced up and down the aisle on the train as if he owned the place arrogantly barking instructions into his hands free headset.

‘I’m being deadly serious, ‘ he said in heavily accented English. ‘Now is the time to be brave.’

Brave? It was only a train ride between Ostrava and Prague, it was 3.5 hours long, and subject to delays but I’ve never felt I needed to be brave to conquer the journey. Resigned to one’s fate maybe, but brave? I think he was exaggerating.

He was a sharp dresser, his shirt looked like it was 9 a.m. not 5.30 p.m., his shoes shone brighter than the setting sun. He wore huge black-rimmed glasses that are all the rage at the moment and had a neat-fringe haircut that couldn’t hide the growing bald patch encroaching from behind. Despite the hands free headset, he had his iPhone 6 in his hand to show the world he owned the latest and brightest gadget. His walk was the combination of a catwalk model and a prowling tiger, slow careful steps, showing off his toned figure to everyone else sitting on the train. Each time he walked passed his colleagues he made a gesture to suggest he’d be back to them asap but this call really was too important.

Finally he sat down but he didn’t shut up.  I could still hear him. He was speaking Czech now but somehow with an American accent that he hadn’t shown when speaking English.

I tried to block him out and make myself comfortable. My bones were aching and I would welcome the chance to snooze. Despite the quacking of my fellow passenger, I was soon falling into a drowsy state that meant sleep was not too far away.

But the sleepiness was not going to last. I was jolted from my dreams by a loud argument. I opened my eyes to see the ticket collector and the poser arguing. I tried to understand what was going on.  Then the penny dropped and I smiled to myself. Mr Wonderful was being asked to leave the first class compartment because he didn’t have the right ticket. As he was being led away he looked back pleadingly at his colleagues.

He said something which I could only assume was, ‘aren’t you coming with me?’ But his colleagues just shrugged, smiled and looked rather pleased as the poser left the to find his seat amongst the hoi polloi.