Riding in trains with strangers.

I am a commuter . I commute therefore I am . Six hours a week is spent trying to avoid catching anyone's eye or attention.   I sit on the tacky purple and green seats and make myself small.



If, like me your phone rings loudly and you swear under your breath - expect to be made to feel like you have just punched the conductor in the teeth.

If you are lucky enough to have a station near a stadium at some point you will get the pleasure of sharing the carriage with football fans. The station is electrified with pre-game excitement and more often than not fans smuggle alcohol into the train. This group is not comfortable on public transport. It isn't that they are rude or wholly disruptive.  They just don't understand the rules of antisocial travel.

If you find yourself in an unfamiliar public vehicle here are my top three rules to follow:

1. If you are on a bus say thank you to the driver when you exit the vehicle. Even though you are being charged exorbitant  prices for a sub standard service ( QLD) it is not the fault of the driver and thus you should be polite.

2. If you are on a busy train with large bags you can only take up one seat without being marginalized by the other passengers. As a frequent bag lady I find that if you put the bags on your lap and look flustered no one will sit next to you ,freeing the seat for your bag.

Q: But Rhiannon, why not just put your bag on the seat to begin with ?
A: Trains are not the real world. People will be forgiving if you make an effort- 99% of the time when you do this people are happy to give you the seat. If you don't offer the seat  they will call you a bitch as you exit the train . If you are like me, being called a bitch makes you react which is never a good idea with strangers as they are unpredictable.
eg.
Stranger: bittttchhh.

Rhiannon: (flips off stranger)

stranger: (stalks then murders Rhiannon as she eats bagel.)

3.

You have no right to shoosh people if you are not on the quiet carriage. However if you are on the quiet carriage it is your sworn duty to silence noisy tweens with loud sighs and scoffing.


The train is taking me to university where I will pretend to an intellectual. Where I will  laugh through my fingers at my peers name-dropping Dickens  in every conversation. If it wasn't for this journey forcing my commute , I probably wouldn't feel so strongly when other commuters broke my rules. When you are stuck in a place for long enough you begin to feel like it's your own. The matchbox warehouses line the tracks  on the Gold Coast route, reminding me there is a whole other Queensland I have chosen to ignore. With the walls I put up on the train I rarely look out the window . So just this once I shrugged off the eyes that stuck to my back as if attached with wire and looked up at the sky.

10 reasons I love: the ocean

Here are some scribbles about my love of the sea:


1. The ocean has a certain mysticism about it. On land its all about practicality, not ingenuity . It's not about bright colours and inking ourselves.

2. The ocean doesn't talk back .

3. the documentaries 'La Planete Blanche' - (the white planet) and 'Deep Blue.'  If you want your eyes to piss tears of joy watch these documentaries.

 -Warning-
  if you don't love the ocean your eyes probably won't piss tears.

4. secretive deep sea creatures. Who doesn't want light up skin? Who doesn't love albino crabs that live on underwater volcanoes?- incidentally  they throw amazing parties.


5.  Sunken Treasure. 

6.  You can't get punched in the ocean. Water is a good thing for self defence.

7. It isn't called sheep week. The ocean has dope predators.

8. Have you seen Narwhals?

9.I don't like swimming in the sea/ going to the beach - this doesn't mean i don't  love the ocean - the ocean is so intense that I respect enough not to get up in it's grill

10. cuttlefish discos

IKEA-Valkommen to the saddest place on earth

The furniture is not the issue. Nor is the price, the flat packs nor the staff .  My issue is not even with the Swedish meatballs that stare up at me like eyeballs from the feeding troff next to me in the cafeteria. I love Swedish Kitch- but, alas I do not love IKEA.

IKEA is  grim. It's not  grim in the way a footballers autobiography is  grim . IKEA is grim like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass is grim. This is grim in the sense that someone should be looking after said child, giving it toys to play with instead of weaponized glass. Or at the very least being responsible enough to lace the child's juice with whiskey.

Of course all my furniture was birthed from the sterile womb of the IKEA storage floor - this isn't my point. I know people who enjoy walking through the cattle cages of IKEA. These people as far as I am concerned must be damaged. Nothing on the earth embodies the spirit of melancholy like IKEA. One only has to take the various chair graveyards as proof of the undercurrent of sadness in the megastore.

These chairs are the off cuts- not good enough to make it into a mock bedroom or living area. The other chairs have been shipped out to student's hovels and middle aged sitting rooms. The ones who don't find a home are thrown into the fluro lit spare rooms that line the corridors of IKEA. The graveyard residents watch as other chairs are whored out to passers by for a 'quick sit' and forgotten.
It is hard life - I imagine.

The arrows point you in the right direction; which is essentially a spiral. IKEA is  a snaking path of faux- living spaces that take you right out of the way of the section you actually need to be in.  Of course this is not without cause. The IKEA experience is tailored in such a way that by the time you reach the point of 'easy to grab' items you are a victim of Stockholm syndrome.  You suddenly feel a connection to the inanimate objects that have caged you . You align yourself with your captors which in this case are frying pans and lamps.

Everything in IKEA is fake. Ovens filled with paper, fake plants and the same books placed carefully into every lie-bookshelf.

Do the authors of these books have a deal with IKEA?

Do literary agents see labels on authors of obscure novels?

If author comes to conclusion that print is dying medium
sell novels to IKEA 
- burn the rest , nobody reads books fuckwit.

IKEA is mapped out like a slaughterhouse with the ambiance of a casino. There is no natural light or windows in the corridors so as to confuse your body clock.  When one enters IKEA one must forget the feel of sun on your skin or rain in your hair.  There is no sun only IKEA.

I don't hate it all. My favorite part of the IKEA experience is the toys. My last trip
I stumbled across a 'Bargain bin of biracial babies.' This is literally the best thing in IKEA as it reflects perfectly the venue. A rainbow of ethnicities trapped in a box together unable to find the exit or the reason they are in the box to begin with . Countless  people with faces contorted from focusing on the pronunciation of 'skånk' .  When we visit  the stores instead of shopping online like sane people we are accepting our fates as Baby Bjorns.

-Rhiannon C Davies.