Barney’s encounter with ‘Mr Pip’

It is not a good day for the trains. One glitch at 5.51am — when a passenger took seriously ill and had to be rushed to hospital by paramedics — has caused a severe tail back.

My friend Barney — on account of the song made famous by the Beatles way back in the day — loves to tell everyone that he travels to work every day by ‘the one after nine-o-nine’. It’s the 9.13 all-stops to the city. On this day, because of the aforementioned glitch, Barney — and a throng of other work goers — is still waiting for the 9.13 at 10.55.

Nearly everyone is speaking on a mobile phone — informing an irate boss somewhere up the line — of their late arrival. People walk about impatiently. Some stamp their feet partly out of frustration, but also to keep the blood circulation going, for the season is changing. The two far ends of the platform — the uncovered areas — are shrouded in what looks like mist, but in reality is cigarette smoke. Smoking is permitted only in these areas and a community of smokers is huffing and puffing their way through the delay.

“You know me,” says Barney. “I had the headphones on and couldn’t give a fig what time the train arrived. What’s the point stressing, eh?”

Barney, apart from being a serial prankster, likes to subtly inform people whenever the opportunity presents itself, which is very often, that he literally stands apart in a crowd, as in this case! So when the train does finally arrive, if Barney is to be believed, he was the least stressed individual on the platform. At least until he entered the carriage at his own unhurried pace — refusing to indulge in any crowd-like stampeding — and found that the only seat available was left empty for a reason.

On the floor just in front of the seat lay a scattering of orange peel — not one of those loose-jacket peels that unrolls in one nice piece; no, the floor was littered with several fragments of peel of varying size and shape.

Forced to occupy the seat and place his legs in such a way they seemed to be straddling the peel, Barney said he cast his glance around for the culprit — and didn’t have to look too far. The orange-eater was seated right there in front of him.

“Even as I spotted this bloke, he pops an orange pod into his mouth, sucks juicily on it and then, wait! This is the part that really got my blood boiling. No sooner is he done swallowing the juice than he spits the pith and the pips out in front of him, on the floor! Could you believe that, Kev?”

The best part, said Barney, is that if this person was made to stand in a line-up of possible ‘culprits who throw orange peel, eat and spit the pips on the carriage floor’, then he’s the last guy you’d probably pick out of the line-up.

“Why?” I asked, Barney, “Do orange-peel litterbugs conform to a particular stereotype?”

“No! But this guy was dressed smartly. And groomed so well. Hair suitably gelled, nicely cropped, beard like designer stubble, very, very expensive silver watch on a very large wrist, extremely fit to look at and — get this — wearing a lanyard round his neck that said New South Wales Transport!”

A transport worker himself?

“Yes, as it turned out,” said Barney.

“What did you do about it?” I asked.

“Oh, you know me, Kev. Not one to rush in head-first without thinking. I mean this guy was too fit to take on. He’d have punched me in the face. Look, I’ll show you what I did instead,” said Barney, reaching for his phone.

And there it is, on video, the action captured live.

“I decided I could be more useful standing and videotaping this person than sitting in a dirty seat. Plus, his bosses have seen the footage.”

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.