On not reading the small print

When is a train, not a train? - when it’s a pictogram!

This is a train

I’d booked my ticket on the Italian Railways site, and Fi had dropped me 5 miles from home at Tolentino station. Then I carefully looked on the Departures Board to check the track number; (you can’t call a strip of tarmac 4 inches above the ground a “platform.” I had the correct time, and there was my route and train number, but instead of the track number there was a pictogram with tyres instead of wheels, and no overhead power take-up.

I checked at the tobacconist across the road – he sells train tickets since the station ticket office is now closed – and he confirmed that after the morning rush (“rush” is a slight exaggeration) it was a bus service, not a train service to Fabriano, and that it ran from just outside the station.

This is a bus

It was just a bus – very much like any other bus, but it had a nauseating aroma that brought back memories of the school buses that took us from my primary school to the playing fields. It’s a fragrance that is difficult to describe. There’s a base undertone of tired moquette upholstery that carries many layers of old dust and the ingrained crumbs of synthetic snack-foods. This is overlaid with a pungent aroma of stale sweat (hence the memory of primary school football,) and penetrating all of this is a sickening whiff of diesel fumes. I made the mistake of spending the first 5 minutes of the journey composing a lengthy text on my mobile phone, just as the coach negotiated the first sequence of hairpin bends. When I raised my head I felt a tightness in my throat and sensed a sickening dizziness as the bus lurched over the mountain passes.

By the time we reached the mainline railway at Fabriano I was feeling decidedly sick and sat very still and very quiet till the Eurostar service for Rome arrived. Now I am at my executive seat, working on my laptop just like everybody else in this carriage and gradually feeling slightly less queasy.

The moral of the story.... read the small print.