No one not to talk to

I'm not commuting today (joy!) but that does deprive me of one of the experiences that seems very particular to travelling on commuter trains.

I've got no one not to talk to. Once I get off the train, I am aurally assaulted by Thameslink and LUL public announcements, the megaphone men, automated station announcements on tube trains, London traffic, etc. And it doesn't stop there. There's a continuous hubbub in the office where I work that lasts well beyond the time that most sensible people have gone home.

But on the train, no one speaks. At least not to each other (I don't count that other piece of noise pollution one gets on trains that invariably starts with the words 'I'm on a train...'). We see each other every day; the same people in the same place on the same platform getting into the same carriage of the same train, often reading the same (the very same) newspaper. And the rule is that we never speak. Sometimes not even to people we know quite well away from the world of commuting.

Why is that?

The only time that etiquette allows us to speak to strangers on a train is when something goes really seriously wrong with the service. Then we are victims together, backs to the wall, reviving the Dunkerque spirit, companions in adversity.

Maybe it's no wonder that we get treated like sheep...