I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of dirty vegetable oil. On my right, I’m greeted by the unmistakable whiff of Greggs meat pie, an unholy stench best described as ‘care-home carpet’.
By the time we reach Colchester, the entire carriage sounds and smells like a student refectory, with competing crisp packets and loud slurping noises adding to my sense of despair at the awfulness of humankind.
There is no longer much escape from the tyranny of ‘food-on-the-go’. Once a train pulls out of a station, passengers become hermetically sealed from the outside world. The freedom to open a window has long since been denied to us due to inevitable concerns about health and safety – which makes the malodorous take-aways even more repulsive.
Why are we so easily swayed by overpriced junk food and what is it about train travel that brings out the glutton in us? Perhaps stuffing our faces while on the move is just another way to fill the empty hours between destinations. Or maybe chowing down on Mars Bars or Ginsters pasties distracts us from that other even more worrying addiction, our smartphones.
It was once considered polite and proper to eat only at mealtimes. Nowadays we are encouraged to dine whenever we like and to make sure everyone knows about it. This often means missing out on actual mealtimes, which can’t be good for us. We are simply ruining our appetites for later.
The ability to defer gratification, a vital civilising influence, is no longer considered a virtue now that every conceivable foodstuff is available 24 hours a day. Our obsession with eating in public is down to entitlement and ease of access. Food used to be valued for its scarcity. As prices fell and expectations rose, we all became junkies to a greater or lesser extent. This is why the average public space is dominated by food outlets. I counted more than a dozen in Paddington station alone. Anyone waiting for the delayed 15.30 to Oxford has an embarrassment of diches to choose from, including M&S wraps, chicken burritos, katsu rice bowls and bacon double cheeseburgers.
The ability to defer gratification is no longer a virtue now that every foodstuff is available 24 hours a day
It is only when travelling abroad that it becomes apparent how coarsened our eating habits have become. During a recent trip to Japan, I took a four-hour train from Tokyo and realised by the end of it that my nostrils had remained unsullied throughout. None of the other passengers had even thought to bring along their own food. Those who did fancy a snack could do so in the confines of the dining car, which only opened at mealtimes and sold fresh, odourless food served on actual plates.
The Japanese deplore public displays and the idea of being ‘in your face’ is seen as horribly intrusive, especially when it comes to food. The Japanese sit down to eat and then speak in hushed, respectful tones. It is almost a sacred act. When the Japanese are out in public, their first consideration is to others. It is a very different attitude to the English. In Japan, I noticed that even conversations on board trains were kept to a minimum and if passengers did engage in chitchat, voices barely rose above a whisper. The overall effect was one of restful civility that immediately put us all on a calm, equal footing.
If only the passengers on board my Greater Anglia to Ipswich could witness life on a Japanese train and follow suit. Until then, I’ll have to contend with the smell of a half-eaten sausage roll and a bag of prawn cocktail crisps, while dreaming of Japan and desperately wishing for a window that opens.
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