44097 – 17:45 Wednesday 23nd April

44097

I managed to reach Paddington a couple of minutes earlier this evening and those vital minutes proved very important as it meant I managed to jump on the 17:45 service to Swansea a mere matter of minutes before it left.

I couldn't help myself but be drawn to Carriage A which turned out OK as these early stages on in the Carriage Capture quest still means I am hitting new carriages rather than any I have already previously visited. Tonight’s lucky winner was 44097 and my luck was still in as I captured the last vacant double seat even though it was one half of a table combination.

I normally avoid the table like the plague as firstly there’s not enough leg room for even the smallest Oompa-Loompa and secondly you’re running a very high risk that some annoying tap-tap-tapper is going to get their laptop out and start doing something vitally important like dashing off some emails or maybe even write a stupid blog. On this occasion though the lure of the spare seat was too much and at least to the relief of both my opposing neighbour and me we could sit diagonally from each other and stretch our legs out.

The journey proceeded fairly normally apart from the rather disconcerting situation that developed between myself and some stranger down the end of the carriage. Every time I looked up from my book (propped on the handy table) this bloke was looking at me and grinning. I tried some surprise glances but no, still every time I looked in his direction he was staring back with this big shit eating grin on his face. I started to get quite nervous and pretended to look out the windows and at the luggage rack to try to see if out the corner of my eye he altered his eye line but he was obviously finding my visage far too amusing. I did notice as I gingerly made my way past him to alight at Reading that he was wearing headphones so it’s perfectly plausible that he might have been listening to some hilarious comedy and just looking into the middle distance. Or perhaps he was just laughing at me. Yeah, it was probably that.