Mud On The Tracks

I had just returned from Scotland, which was not unusual in itself as I’d been over and back at least once a week for the previous few months, but this time I took the train instead of hiring a car.

Having visited Edinburgh, Dundee & Aberdeen I have come to the conclusion that the English language is well and truly dead. Either that or it has evolved or devolved into a series of grunts and nods that my untrained eyes and ears are unable to fathom.

The Scottish rail system is really rather good, it was privatised a few years back and since then the standard of care given to passengers is fairly high. Well being from Ireland if the train can go faster than thirty miles an hour then it’s an improvement.

The carriage I ended up sitting in was quiet, the air of silence only disturbed by the humming of the tracks. This calm silence lasted for about thirty minutes, when at one of the lesser stops, a small gathering of English males, from Newcastle I derived, boarded the train, and as the mother of bad luck would have it, decided on my carriage to sit.

These guys having settled down for the trip, which lasts roughly two and half hours, then decided to while away the time by drinking cans of Stella and annoying everybody who happened to be within shouting distance, myself included. After the initial excitement of seeing two young girls pass by in short skirts had subsided, one of the guys opted to start a conversation with myself. He got the annoying formality of finding out my name out of the way by addressing me as "Hippie". I can only surmise that he decided on the name because of the long hair and beard I was sporting at the time.

I of course smiled as best I could, what else was to I do? There was only one of me and four of them. I answered politely and continued with my examination of floor which had been occupying me since these gentlemen boarded the train. Best not to make eye contact I thought.

On hearing my Irish accent the group got a bit excited. Not rowdy excited, just excited. Comments started drifting my way, everybody in the group had a go, and I just smiled, not because they were funny, but because I couldn't understand a bloody word they were saying.

This is when I became deeply interested in the group as a whole. I could no longer view them as normal men; they had grown, developed into something much more interesting. The thought kept crossing my mind, these guys are from England, the birth place of English as a language, and they can't speak a word of it.

The rest of the journey passed by in a haze, they continued to speak at me and I continued to glare and answer as best I could. The scene never got ugly or menacing but I couldn't shake the feeling that these guys weren't like me. They had their own tongue, slang, cuss words and I kept thinking what it must be like in their world. They can all talk to and understand each other, but as soon as they speak to anybody, not from their little community, their comments must always be met with blank stares and hurried responses, they must feel so misunderstood.

The journey ended, eventually, we all disembarked, said our goodbyes and parted. It wasn't all that exciting, my train journey, but I did discover something on the way. The English language is dead, and it's the English that killed it.