Metro in audio book & the loudest toddlers in England.

Traveling outside of rush hour on the train can often be a relaxing experience. Not it seems if your journey is to take you from Waterloo to Andover. Yesterday I went to record and photograph the sculptor working on the Sir Keith Park statue. Having already read the metro on the Colchester to London train I tucked into a history book on Rome only to be distracted by feeling a sense of deja vu – I could hear some Canadians talking about the stories I’d already read. At first it was odd but then I realized , rather annoyingly, one of the party of three was determined to read the metro newspaper out loud to the group. This was however nothing on the scale of punishment I was going to be put through on my return journey to London.

A young middle class mother and her two toddlers were sat adjacent to me in the quiet zone. Now I hadn’t deliberately aimed to be in the quiet zone but once I was settled I realized it was an ideal opportunity to catch up on sleep – this was the plan but very quickly I realized it wasn’t a viable option given how noisy the two young children were. Not being a parent I dismissed my initial annoyance at their noise, that was until the mother starting encouraging – whilst we are all sat in the quiet zone – her children to practice singing. This was all happening whilst the younger of the two girls was standing on the seats, with mum encouraging the continued ‘fun’. I resisted temptation to request for a more socially aware approach to child management (in the style of a recent trip to Lincoln where I had to offer feedback over a poor standard of coffee) so for an hour had to endure the noise. Mum did try and calm the children down towards the end of the journey with a classic game of I SPY but this didn’t entertain the oldest child who went off and found a man with an IPHONE on the train – in which she persuaded him to access some games. The mother found this amusing, and without apologizing to the man merely said that she ‘does this all the time’.

Now I’m no parent but I do think encouraging some social discipline into young children is probably a prudent long-term move – the next time I have to endure a family like that in the quiet zone I might just have to offer that feedback.