Trains + iPods = Disgruntled Doc

Those who follow my Twitter (@jamesdoc) will know that a fair amount of my time is spent on trains. I don’t drive, so the majority of my travelling between university in Lincoln and home in Worthing is done on trains, as is generally all journeys that I cannot do by bike. Today was one of those occasions! I had the pleasure of visiting Vicky and Will in London, my mode of transport the train. Now a journey on a train is something that I often enjoy by reading a book, chatting to a stranger, catching up on late work, or listening to music. It is the latter of method of train entertainment that I wish to talk about in this blog entry.

I have no problem with people listening to music, it’s a little bit anti-social, however I’ll get over that it, sometimes people just want to zone out for a bit to music. Now a couple of years ago, when mobile phones were given really awful speakers, there was a massive phase where no matter where you were you could be sure to find someone listening to their rap music through this tiny speaker. Thankfully most people have twigged that this is annoying and have stopped, you get the occasional few, but they can be avoided. However what was really grating on me today were the people with headphones playing music so loudly that the whole train was also listening to the music also. Aside from the obvious point that these people are absolutely destroying their hearing with the loud volume and directed sound, it is damaging my enjoyment of the train journey home; if I wanted to listen to music I would be doing it through my own headphones at a sensible volume as not to irritate everyone around me… argh.

Am I getting too worked up about this? What do you think an acceptable penalty is? I’m not sure chopping off the ears of offenders is an acceptable, but I am tempted to carry around a pair of scissors on trainsto cut certain wires…