1267: Strange and Horrible Day

What a strange and horrible day today was.

Most of it went well enough. I went down to Brighton to work in the Eurogamer offices as I said I was going to, and that was thoroughly pleasant — particularly getting to meet some of the people I’ve only known as names and Twitter avatars up until now.

It was after my working day ended that things got strange and horrible though.

First up, I heard the news that Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb has died. I didn’t know him personally — and in fact my only real awareness of him was he and the GiantBomb team mocking USgamer’s name when we launched — but it’s been clear from the outpouring of grief on Twitter today that he was a beloved character in the gamer community. The poor guy had just got married, too; my heart really goes out to his friends, family, fans and colleagues. I can’t really say any more than that — other people who actually know him have said it much better than I can.

The fact that Davis had clearly touched so many lives and brightened them up made the subsequent event all the more difficult to stomach. Polar opposites, if you will; Davis as an apparent force for good; what I’m about to talk about as a clear force for shitty awful rubbishness.

I caught the train to Brighton today because Brighton is not very good with parking spaces, and also because the train fare was surprisingly cheap. In fact, it was so cheap that I paid just a couple of quid extra and got a First Class ticket for shits and giggles — Southern Trains’ First Class compartment is more of a small cupboard with eight seats in it rather than any kind of luxurious accommodation, but it was nice to be away from the noise and irriatingness of my fellow passengers.

The trip to Brighton went without incident. I played some Animal Crossing and some Velocity Ultra and was thoroughly ready to settle in for a workday by the time I got to the Gamer Network offices. It was the way back that was a little less pleasant.

The train I caught back to Southampton was rammed solid, so I was glad to be in the First Class compartment — it pretty much guaranteed me a seat. Moments after I sat down and settled in, though, another guy came in.

I will freely admit that I judged him as soon as I saw him. He was wearing tatty jogging bottoms and a tracksuit jacket, carrying a plastic bag and nursing a can of some cheap and awful-looking lager. He sat down, put his feet on the table and almost immediately started playing music incredibly loudly from his phone. My immediate prejudice against him was, it seems, entirely correct.

It became very apparent that he was deliberately trying to annoy me. I took off the headphones I was wearing to play Animal Crossing, because the combination of the 3DS woefully quiet sound output and my cheap headphones was not blocking out his shitty music. I turned to him and asked him politely if he’d turn down his music, please. He told me to “fuck off” and “stop being such a fat cunt”. I clearly wasn’t going to get any reason out of him, so I grit my teeth, put my headphones on and tried my best to ignore him, even when he was on the phone to one of his shitbag friends and was openly mocking me over the phone, knowing full well that I could hear him.

I won’t lie; I was somewhat afraid. I didn’t want to confront him over the way he was acting again, because he clearly wouldn’t listen to any sort of reason or a reasonable request. I didn’t know what to do, and I certainly wasn’t going to just walk out of the compartment and abandon the seat I’d paid for.

Eventually, the conductor showed up and discovered that — surprise! — this asshole didn’t have a ticket. I wanted to tell the conductor that he’d been being abusive and that I feared for my safety, but I utterly choked; it had taken all the confidence I had (which isn’t much) to ask him to turn his music down in the first place, and his aggressive response had destroyed any hope of me being able to be any more assertive. I just had to grit my teeth and continue to try and ignore him. Thankfully he got off the train a few stops later, so I didn’t have to suffer the entire two-hour train journey fearing for my safety and sanity.

The conductor came back after he got off and apologised to me; apparently this lout was a regular on that service, and there was really very little they could do about it. Fines wouldn’t work because his bank card inevitably wouldn’t work; they just had to grin and bear it.

Which is shit, really, isn’t it? To relate this to the earlier part of this post, there is really no justice in this world. Someone like Ryan Davis, who touched a significant number of people’s lives in a very positive manner from the look of things, is taken from the world at the age of 34 while utter wastes of space like this shitbag on the train this evening continue to survive and pollute the gene pool with their fetid stench.