To be nervous

[LetTheSunshine001]

I’m going out the beginning of next month. I’m going to a concert at the o2 with a friend. On the way back for the last leg of the journey, we will separate and get on different trains. She’s okay about this but I’m nervous, I’m literally on my own train for about 10 minutes before I get off and get into my taxi. It will be about 12ish at night and I’m a bit nervous.
has anyone done this before and have they been ok? I’ve watched too many crime programmes to know the possibilities of what could happen 🫣 Aibu to worry?

https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/passenger-assist-and-ways-book-assistance

Here you go OP. I'm assuming this is the rail company you'll be using to get to Shenfield. It says you can either call them or use the website or an app, and they provide help getting from platform to platform, incase the taxi meet point is on the opposite side. I'm sure the guard would walk you to your taxi quickly, regardless. I've travelled at night out of London many a time and find them very cordial and helpful.

OP you sound as if you have had an incredibly sheltered life. Literally millions of people make this journey every day.

It’s sort of understandable that you are anxious about this if you haven’t done it before but the bigger question is how you have got to the age of 33 without being able to take a suburban train at night on your own.

It sounds as if you have been brought up in a super traditional environment and told it’s dangerous for women to be out on their own at night etc.

With kindness, you need urgently to get past this mindset as it will hugely hold you back in life. Is your husband very overprotective?

Please whatever you do don’t videocall him from the train. It won’t make you safer and it will enrage other people on the train.

But surely you can see that while it’s perfectly understandable that someone recovering from illness or serious injury that led to them being a wheelchair user and having significant mobility problems would not be used to getting about by themselves on public transport at night, therefore people could have given you much more tailored advice?

For instance, there’s no reason for you to have to disembark alone at your station. Book help, via the link a pp posted. I used to use it all the time when I was a wheelchair user after an accident.

In fairness people were commenting on assuming you didn’t have limited mobility etc, which of course changes things.

Im sure if you had said this initially you would have got different responses.

It’s not justifying yourself, it’s giving your formation for people to give appropriate response, which you’ve now received.

It was key information. I hope you are ok on your journey and enjoy your night out.

You were under no obligation to, OP. Unfortunately some on this thread decided to treat it as an opportunity to sneer, but really that tells you all you need to know about them, doesn't it. Some of us get it, just saying.

What a weird response. The OP omitted key information and then got snitty when responses didn't psychically intuit that she has good reason to have led a very sheltered life and not to have ever been on a train herself at night, aged 33.

It totally depends where you live too. My friends where I grew up, ill guarantee none have been on a train alone at midnight. I do it all the time where I live now. None have led sheltered lives, and are not people who are overly anxious. I’d say it’s perfectly normal to have some hesitation to be alone at a train station platform late at night.

So drip feed or no drip feed, as usual, many posters used it as an opportunity to sneer and try and make someone feel inferior or that something is wrong with them, when it’s a perfectly normal thing to worry about.

Enjoy OP when it comes around.

I agree it alters the perspective, but it's not a weird response at all. Are you suggesting it was fine for people to sneer at OP simply because she hadn't divulged chapter and verse about her situation?

My take is that OP got 'snitty', if you want to use that word, because grown women were behaving like playground bullies about her situation. In her shoes, I would have too. The backlash now is imo happening partly because people are thinking 'she should have told me, I wouldn't have posted a string of crying-with-laughter emojis' - but as grown women they shouldn't have done that anyway, regardless of context.

It is completely abnormal for a 33 year old woman to write, about a solo ten-minute train journey around midnight and a transfer to a taxi at the station, has anyone done this before and have they been ok? As though she was planning to climb the north face of the Eiger barefoot and without ropes. Yes, I think amused and scoffing responses merited, given the post.

If the OP had included all the information she dripfed in her initial post, no one would have sneered. Because it would have been obvious why she was approaching this deeply ordinary thing with such trepidation.

Hadn’t divulged “chapter and verse”, not the care, she hadn’t divulged relevant information, which explained why a grown woman was concerned about a very normal event.

Are you suggesting the absence of the full story merited the sort of treatment OP has been given on this thread?

Well, what that tells us is that you think it's perfectly fine to sneer and scoff at other women if you happen to decide the context appears to justify it. I'm glad I don't know you.

I think without the full story, OP was being UR to be so concerned about a very trivial logistical journey.

That doesn’t answer my question. I was talking about all the sneering and derision pps have been indulging in on the thread.

My daughter was at a late cinema screening last night and did the last leg of the public transport journey on jer own at 12.30am. She's 16 and I didn't give this a second thought.

Sorry, are you demanding I answer your question? Really?

I’ve told you my view, OP without the subsequent information was being UR. How people react to that is up to them really.

Nope. Merely pointing out that you hadn’t answered it.

🤷‍♀️

Yes, some people hardly read the thread and look for the easiest opportunity to put the boot in. It happens all the time and I don’t have any time for them.

But context is everything!

Precisely. Sanctimoniousness at its best.

If you don't have it already, download the passenger assistance app, add in information abiut your disability (your mobility and anxiety and needing help to your seat/back again) and hopefully someone should meet you at your train if you book it 24 hours or so in advance and escort you to your other platform and help you on and find the seat with you.

If there is enough time to adjust and you don't need or want help off your train because your friend will be there, the meeting point for assistance if you book it is by the disabled ticket office part 20 mins before your next train (usually noone is working in the disabled one so I go to let a manned one know we are there). Said ticket office is fully accessible by lifts if you need them and is on the ground floor next to whistlestop shop which is itself next to burger King.

Sheffield is a nice well lit station where it's always busy (I have to be out by 10 due to the last train into my town so not sure how it is after, but I imagine the same) there was staff from each railway provider around, personally the best from experience are emr and Northern.

If you need then, taxis are outside the station directly. If you want an Uber, they've now now and have to be waited for at the main collection/drop off area a few meters away (keep walking passed the taxis to the end and around the little corner and you are there.)