Marylebone to Harrow - 12 minutes,

I was sitting on the train the other day – Monday, in fact – it was six pm in London and the clocks were striking thirteen!!!!

Sorry about that I lapsed into the novel 1984.

I was at Marylebone Station (London) at six-o-clock waiting for the six twelve to move as soon as that time arrived and I was in the Quiet Coach. The Quiet Coach being the place where you are not allowed to use your cell phone or any other electronic device unless switched to 'silent.'

On that train it is fairly small and limited to about twenty seats and, as there was still twelve minutes to go to departure time, I was the only passenger.

Bit by bit the coach filled mostly with men – in fact mainly with men with one exception. All of them, when they arrived, pulled out an electronic device, made sure it was in silent mode and started to play with it– for what else is it but play?

Most were phones but there was a tablet, opposite me, and maybe a pad; actually there could have been more pads but I didn't see them mainly because I don't know what a pad looks like; unless we are going back in time when seeing a pad would have been looking at some female private apparel.

It seemed that I was looking at the others as they were turned to face me. I did not envy any of them and as they looked at me, dressed in jackets and ties and wearing mostly white shirts, I could see that none of the inhabitants envied me either.

Just before the train was due to go a man with a folding bike came in to the compartment and plonked the thing in to the middle of the aisle. Then he took out a cell phone and started playing with it. With a puzzled look on his face he gingerly and very daintily poked his forefinger on to the keys to type out some sort of tom tom of a message. He wasn't typing digits as there must have been half a second or so between each pick of the finger as if it was taking him to other places.

The man was quite tall and wore, over his jacket and tie, a mackintosh, which was open, and I remember wondering if the tail of the mac would drape over his saddle and catch his rear wheel.

As he picked his way through cyberspace his little finger was poised in the air pointing at the roof of the train and yes, you are right: as he dabbed away on his tiny keyboard the pinky went up his nose for a quick pick. A quick pick and back to the business of showing me his belly from the open mac with his striped shirt tucked into his trousers which were held up by a cardboard belt.

I'm sorry I couldn't help that description – a regular belt.

As I looked around I tried to imagine that I was making this journey as a regular commuter as they were; doing this journey every day.

It wouldn't be so bad for me as I was only going one stop, as far as Harrow-on-the-hill, which is about twelve minutes.

I was only on it at this time – the rush hour - as I'd been to the dentist.

Then I sat back and had a think.

Have you ever done that?

Just sat back and thought? 

As I looked at the commuters, with their electronic devices, I wondered why did it ever come to this? This was the overground national rail service as opposed to the regular London Transport and every piece of electronic devices they were holding would have driven my mother to distraction if she suddenly rose from the grave – and she's only been dead for about twenty years.

And then I thought even more – what was it about the last twenty odd years that gave us all this means of massive communication that we could use from the seat of a commuter train? Or, as in the case of 'Bike Man' standing in the aisle doing his act for us all to see, from a standing position, whilst trying to stop a mobile bike from falling over as he picked and plucked.

Elsewhere in this capital of Great Britain four million people were on the tube – four million: that's more than the population of any other town or city in Britain. And this train wasn't even the tube.

One day, last month a record 4.7 million people used the tube and, even though most would have no reception down there, most of them had electronic devices which would be communicating with the rest of the world.

As I thought this I asked myself why, or how come, it had taken the world, since its inception to discover such things. Electricity has always been with us; electronic storms have always been described by writers of the past, gas has always been there and nobody really invented radio waves, photography or even cyberspace. So why did it take so long?

Was it because the way to do things in the old days was to fight? The biggest is best and the fastest is there first?
I remember going to youth clubs as a teenager and the little fella would turn up with his record player and records. Then he would play them for the big kids who would laugh at him and bully him in to playing what records they liked. No thanks, to Cliff Richard, play Jerry Lee – play Chuck.

But the little fella played his own collection as he didn't have Jerry Lee or Chuck, and the big fellas had to make do with that as they had no records of their own. They spent all their money on pink socks but later on the little fella with his record collection became the deejay and the star – not the big kids or the clever kids.

I mean look at the British Chris Evans. - in any other age????

The clever kids invented the bomb. 

Before cyberspace, the cell phone and the pad and tablet they discovered how to blow us all to smithereens.

I was thinking all this as the train careered its way to Harrow-on-the-hill and when I made a slight move to get off and planned how I should scale the folding bike in the aisle, Bike Man spotted my slight movement and in one fowl swoop, pushed his folding bike along the aisle, alongside my seat and my arse had hardly left the comfort of the cushion when his fat one was feeling the warmth I'd left behind.

Twelve minutes, aye, from Marylebone to Harrow.

 a phone - how exciting