Shattered and... shattered!

You might be wondering the meaning of the title of this post but I'll explain. First I'm shattered as I've been on nights for ages. There seems to have been some mistake in the roster which has resulted in me doing 2 sets of back to back nights instead of the usual one so I've been so nocturnal recently that I'm begining to hallucinate. Luckily only one more night to go.

One thing I didn't hallucinate about was the thousands of shards of glass (hence the second "shattered") that were sprayed over me and two other train passengers as 2 gang members (calling themselves "the White South Boys") trashed the train carriage I was sitting in last night on the way to work.

I have to say that the whole experience was a bit surreal - not really frightening as I always have that thought in my mind that 1 ned with a Stanley Knife could chib the crap out of any Aussie thug, but none the less a bit disturbing.

Earlier in the day I'd toyed with the idea of cycling to work but it was getting cold and the road was still damp after the recent rain so I opted for the train. As the 20:48 to Hornsby came to a stop in front of me I saw 2 guys lying asleep near the doors. The trains here are quite a good design for carrying lots of people. As you walk in to a carriage there are seats on one side for disabled people, elderly folk and the like that run parallel with the train like those on the Glasgow ungerground (which is where these guys were sleeping). On the other side of those you have the option of going up or down a few steps to a double decker section that houses about 12 rows of seats perpendicular to the train.

I walked passed the sleeping 20 year olds who had their hoodies pulled over their faces to shade themselves from the over head lights and went down to the lower section of seats. About 20 minutes into the journey there was suddenly loads of banging from the disabled seats and I looked up to see one of the blokes hanging upside down from the hand rails kicking his feet into the overhead lights until the smashed and went out. Bare in mind that there was about eight lights in total so this went on for several minutes.

He was about to settle back down to sleep when his phone went and he answered with the phrase "White South Boys, White South Boys" and started going onto to his mate that is was "like totally lights out here man. Totally lights out!".

Now so far none of this had really bothered me apart from that fact that I'm paying taxes in a foreign country which were now going towards repairing a train carriage that some dick head had smashed up for no real reason except that he'd forgotten an eye mask, and that I was trying to listen to "Learn French in your car" on my iPod and the banging completely screwed up my grammer for "there is a goldfish in this bowl that is floating upside down". However, the 2 other blokes that were sitting a few seats behind me had gone totally silent.

After the short conversation with the mate on the phone the light-smasher and his now-awake buddy seemed to move into the next cabin. Suddenly I saw my ashen-faced carriage compadres out of the corner of my eye grab their stuff and move to the very back row of seats. There was a few new bangs and I looked up to the landing to see the thugs on the far side of the doors ajoining to the next carriage kick the door window in which sent a ton of glass shards flying into out carriage. They then proceeded to do the same to the remaining 3 windows.

Luckily it was my stop next (the one before Hornsby) and as I walked past the two guys who were white as Pete Docherty after snorting some bad coke while at a Halloween party dressed as a ghost having just had a bag of flour thrown in his face, one of them said, "Er, if you see anyone at the station can you tell them what's going on?"

"Sure," I said and as I got off the train the two "gang" members were proceding to smash in the outer windows of the train so I simply called the Cops. I don't know if they ever caught the guys but after a few minutes of calling I could hear several sirens in the direction of Hornsby station.

I hope they did get a Rodney King-style doing, but really the main point of this story was more to illustrate that even though there was the threat of imminent violence Sydney still seems incredibly safe compared to Glasgow. If it had been 2 Neds on the train then they would have also been looking to cut up someones face whereas these guys never interacted with any of us and just seemed intent on vandalism. Not that I was about to try it out but I wonder what would have happened if someone had actually approached them in a confrontational manner? If anything I think a fist-fight would have been the only result without any real blood shed or serious injury to the losing party.

Weird that Glasgow makes you complacent to violence eh?