Female passengers more deadly than the male

Chamonix Train
Originally uploaded by evie22

As someone who spends 32 days a year on the trains of Haute Savoie, it has to be said that normally the trip into Geneva and back passes without incident. Admittedly, you are often spared the excitement of fist-fights, drunks, and armpits in you face that I used to experience on London's Northern Line, but you get a seat and fellow travellers are usually a fairly amicable bunch. Some have formed commuting cliques, and regard travelling to work as a somewhat hilarious activity, while I, true my British Northern Line roots, sit miserably behind a newspaper and growl at everyone who looks my way in case they turn out to be mentally unstable.

So imagine my shock when a bit of a ruck, brawl, call it what you like broke out on my way home as the train stopped in Reignier, near Annemasse. Essentially, a youngish fellow who seemed to be carrying only metal bars as luggage, had refused to buy a ticket from the conductor, who had taken offence to this attitude and called the Police, thereby delaying the train and causing a growing tide of displeasure among my fellow passengers.

Argue though they did, the non-ticket carrying gent seemed as stubborn as a mule, before he was suddenly accosted by a gaggle of young women who looked ten times more terrifying than the conductor and seemed to be winning the dispute hands down before the arrival of the boys in blue. Hell hath no fury and all that. The transformation from shy, slightly awkward adolescent into something that would have looked at home in one of the 'Predator' movies was shocking to say the least. As luck had it, just when the screaming and screeching of abuse was beginning to make me side with the ticketless miscreant, les gendarmes hoved into view.

I was happy to see that they approached the situation in a typical French policeman fashion, walking alongside the train in a slow, patronising but slightly wary fashion, as if they wanted to exude confidence but feared receiving a metal bar on the napper. The arrival of the old bill nailed the coffin in the young scamp's argument and he swiftly disembarked, metal bars and all, and he was subjected to an interrogation by the two policiers who looked like they were giving him a severe dressing down for having so rudely interrupted their afternoon cat nap.

As the train remained at a standstill, conversation spontaeneously erupted along the lines of thwarted connections, and loved ones waiting needlessly at the next stop, and what a ba**ard the guy standing on the tarmac was / is. But these train conversations are hopelessly selfish - if you say 'my beloved cat died this morning', they would no doubt reply 'Really? My neighbours got a nice cat'.