Is there a better place in the world to work than the quiet coach? I’m going to say it: there is not. Between an ever-shifting view of the English countryside, wifi too patchy to do any serious procrastinating, and the perfect amount of access to tea, it’s my own little version of productivity paradise. Biohackers can have their standing desks, Superman can keep his fortress of solitude – I just need a window seat and a power socket.
Or at least, I did. Because these days, the last bastion of silence that public transport’s supposed to afford seems to be under threat. Even the train conductors seem to have given up on it. “Please try to keep the noise to a minimum,” they murmur over the intercom, like beleaguered supply teachers. “Or, I don’t know, at least don’t let your child watch Thor: Ragnarok at full volume.”
I mention this because, everywhere else, we quiet types have already surrendered. There have always been antisocial sorts for whom the intrusiveness of playing music aloud is the whole point – you’d need conductors with stun guns and a much more draconian government to deal with them, and I’m prepared to concede that might be worse than the alternative. The problem is everyone else: the commuter watching football highlights on the tube, the teens mainlining TikTok on the bus, the business-casual bro taking a call with his phone on speaker like he’s in The Apprentice. Disapproving glances are déclassé, audible tuts stopped working in the 90s, and deliberate coughs went out of fashion with Covid. I could wear headphones, of course, but that’s what Big Headphone wants: half of every train carriage in chunky noise-cancellers, the other half filling the air with tinny electronica.
And so, the quiet coach is where we have to make our stand. A crying baby? Listen, nobody wants to make a new parent’s life any harder. A coachload of Liverpool fans? We’ve all got our own comfort level with confrontation. But if it’s some Zoom call bants, I promise, I will be the first person there with an extremely British: “Er, I don’t know if you noticed the sign …?” And if a train company comes along offering to enforce the rules with an iron fist or a carriage that’s one big Faraday cage, I’ll be there to vote with my wallet. I won’t applaud them, of course: it’s not the quiet coach respecters’ way.
Joel Snape is a writer and fitness expert
