Sodding tick tick tick beep tick of touchscreen phones

There is a 40-something woman sat opposite me on the train.

Ah but first, I should explain: I’m sat in shit-class with the great unwashed because I missed my 955am train on account of the brilliantly inefficient London transport system. (The last mile – i.e. getting *TO* the station, despite living *IN* central London, that’s the really shit bit.)

I’ve no issue with shit-class normally. Perfectly fine. I use it a lot. However if I’m going up to the north east, I thoroughly enjoy the widespread availability of wireless internet on the train. WiFi is chargeable in chicken-class (say, a fiver per hour or the like), but generally included gratis when you travel first-class. And if you’re booking in advance, the difference between first and chicken is normally a few pounds, ergo, I book first class, enjoy free wifi, a bigger seat and, usually, freedom from copious shite, panic and stress associated with many traveling in chicken.

The good news is that there’s a power socket for your MacBook Air laptop — pity the unshaven executives in the seats ahead of me sporting laptops weighing at least four bricks and still waiting for Windows to boot up 20 minutes into the journey.

Back to the woman. She’s got, what I think is an LG (Viewty, on Orange) in her hands. I’ve not been able to spot the brand and I can’t quite recognise it. However it is driving me and the rest of the great unwashed here, oop-tha-wall (“up the wall”).

Why?

Every single interaction of her thumb on the device delivers a mild chirrup or a half-chirrup. Bit, bit, bit-bit-bit, bit, bit…bitbitbitbit. It’s worse, obviously, when she’s texting rather than arsing about the menu system for fun.

It is, admittedly, not as bad as sitting next to an old man with a Nokia 3300 on LOUD-LOUD-LOUD key-press mode. But after 25 minutes of bit bit, bit-bit-bit, it gets severely annoying. Enough so that I put on my headphones.

This is the main problem with phones that don’t have buttons and have touch-screen instead. The user is accustomed to some kind of feedback for every interaction and sound is often required.

I’d be more annoyed if it was someone using an iPhone with the typewriter key sound on though.

I glared.

I didn’t mean to. I was checking ShoZu had uploaded on my E90 when I glanced over and did a microsecond glare. This was, I think, enough for her to GET THE MESSAGE.

She has now put the LG away and has swapped to moisturising her hands (and, I kid ye not, her wrists and arms). Oh the joy of the great unwashed.