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.
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