Overheard on the train

[8Track]

Man several seats away silently picks up a ringing phone.
"....Who is it?"
".."
"Terribly sorry I'm on a mountain train in Tibet; terrible signal!"
"......"
"Oh, no, no; I'm losing you..."
hangs up

No mate. We're going through a tunnel near Streatham.

Would love to know why that particular lie!!

Any other odd train conversations which have enlivened your journey? Or maybe it's just me who's overly entertained by minutiae!

Overheard on a bus one lady said to another I never saw one with a zip in before have you? She hadn't and I never found out what it was!🤩

I had some bloody woman the other day arguing with her ex on the phone all the way from the London terminus to the suburbs (40min!). Loads of emoting and repetition

A few years ago on a local commuter train going home after work, a young man on the phone to his ?girlfriend/wife?, insisting over and over that he was on the bus, and she should wait at the bus stop and his bus would pull up and he would get off. She could obviously hear the beeping of the train doors at each stop, as he kept telling her that was the bus doors. There were quite a few of us absolutely agog, and I was >this close< to following him off the train (he got off 2 stops before my stop) to see what the reaction was when he didn't arrive on a bus.

On a bus once, heard two teenage girls behind me discussing how great it was that Jenny had been put on the pill, because now she could share it with the rest of the gang whenever one of them was going to have sex

OP that's a terrible lie. Trains in Tibet are probably more frequent than in Streatham.

Yy. Also have a better mobile signal.

I heard two men on the northern line planning to rob a bank a few years ago. They were speaking in their own language which they'd clearly decided I wouldn't understand, but I did.

Woman 1:’she always looks like she has a bad smell under her nose!’
Woman 2: ‘that’s because she’s such a massive arsehole she smells shite all the tine!’

Man 1: "it's so warm, I can't sleep in this weather"
Man 2: "you need a dehumanizer in the bedroom"

@whingeygingy Duvet cover?

Sort of lie I tell to cold callers to stop the call. That would be my assumption.

Although I had one tell me I was a liar yesterday... I told them I didn't work in a café. I don't. And it was the work phone. Apparently they were due to service the coffee machines. When I said we didn't have any (truthful) he called me a liar and (in a very strong accent) said he was standing outside the building and could see it was a café. I invited him to come in and have a look. Not surprisingly he didn't come in.

I once heard a man confessing to a crime. He’d been picked up by the police in one city, transferred to another and charged. He was on the train back to his home city and was telling his friend how they had nothing on him and they were laughing about where the stolen goods were. Turns out there was a police officer writing it all down on the next bank of seats, and he was arrested again on the platform.

Never seen one with A zip in have you?

On a local train line once, suburb into northern city and one girl was holding court with those with her, describing another girl in a very loud and dramatic voice as her "archenemy". Collective carriage eyeroll. This is Liverpool, love

not overheard but a phone conversation I had on the bus yesterday. I had to explain to my father ... yet again ... why my Husband’s uncle couldn’t buy a kidney for a transplant. When I finally hung up and looked around I realised I had made a mistake having that conversation on public transport.

I have a duvet cover from Ikea with a zip in it! Matching pillow cases have zips too. And the whole set was only a tenner with its sophisticated rare zips!

So it wasn't me on that bus

Years ago on a bus I over heard a woman on the phone loudly telling someone that her son had just found out his wife had cheated on him when the baby they were expecting was born mixed race. Once baby was born she admitted to a one night stand and was begging him to raise the baby as his own. Not sure why his mum thought the very packed bus was the place to be having this very personal conversation.

Reminds me of this thread in classics

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/2267941-Overheard-on-the-bus

No mate. We're going through a tunnel near Streatham.

Presumably his call was from someone saying they had heard he had been injured in an accident.

I think one of the funniest if annoying 'overheards' was the man on an SWR train explaining that he had to end the call (which had been going on for around 20 minutes already) as everyone seemed to be looking at him. To be fair to his fellow commuters, he was sitting in the Quiet Carriage, right by the sign requesting that mobile phones weren't used in that carriage .

When I was about eighteen I was on a late night bus, very crowded. A slightly drunk man sat down beside me, and at some stage for no reason he told me he'd murdered someone. I nodded along until it came to my stop, then scurried away.

Overheard on the bus, going past the hospital,
"Our Jim's in there, he's in Insensitive Care".

One man on the Park and Ride once was having a chat with the bank about his finances. By the end of the journey I knew he was £2k in debt and he was trying to get a loan. Why on the bus?

Another from ages ago that stuck with me-
Woman on phone: I got you those biscuits you saw on telly. You know, the viss cunts. (Pause) Well it looks like viss cunt. (Pause) Shut up.

I think she meant Viscounts

Years ago in a Starbucks I heard a young man and woman (late teens/early 20s) who were clearly in a Romeo and Juliet type situation. She was crying and he kept saying “It doesn’t matter what they say, I love you” etc. They were so lovely together. I still wonder what happened to them.