Caution: Contents Hot

It is 09.11 on Saturday morning and I am in an all new kind of hell. Even home-made ‘oxford’ marmalade on home-made bread cannot cut through the assault to the senses which happens to be my carriage until Newport. It seems that Aliens must be destroyed at top volume, meanwhile an unknown musical sensation probably of short duration croons away. Tea is drunk from cardboard cups proclaiming ‘caution contents hot’ and crisps are munched at top volume, with scarcely a breath between bags. Salvation arrives in the form of Shrewsbury, gateway to the real world. As the rubbish is whisked away, (a paper kindly recycled rather than dumped, ‘you do recycle these don’t you?’ she asks as she adds the unwanted sections to the sack.) I wonder whether they know – these writers of the sections we never read, do they care that their words are tomorrows loo paper or house insulation? The carriage empties out and we disappear into the obscurity which is the Borders of Wales. Aliens continue to be murdered and the world is put to rights by a lilting Valleys accent. I retreat into Douglas Adams with a paper cup of (fair-trade) tea. Da iawn, trenau Arriva Cymru. Caution: Contents Hot!