I do a reasonable amount of travelling in the course of my job. I'm part of a team of six people, spread across five different sites. My monthly manager meetings and monthly team meetings are - invariably - held somewhere other than my home office in Leeds. Today I travelled down to London for a meeting with my manager.

I must have travelled between London and Leeds by train several hundred times by now. On the whole it's a pretty painless experience. For something I've done so often, I've had so few problems. Only twice has a train broken down, and the only other significant delay was when we hit a cow. If I had a field full of cows next to a 125mph railway line and I didn't put a fence up, I'd expect the odd bent cow every now and again.

It's amazing what you can learn during the course of the two-and-a-half hour journey - it all depends on where the seat reservation gods have placed you. On the way to London today I learnt nothing, as I spent most of the journey snoozing. However, on the way home I learnt that an asthma inhaler is more properly known as an MDI, that certain types of these devices have historically contained CFCs, and that any CFCs released by these devices takes ten years to reach the atmosphere where they presumably then act upon the ozone layer.

Information like this is readily available on every journey, you just need to be sat in the right places. At the times I tend to travel, most people on board are travelling to or from the capital on business. A fair proportion of these people happily tap away on their laptops en route.

By now I'm sure you're thinking that I'm a nosey bastard, but I swear to you that I am only averagely nosey. I'm fairly inquisitive, but I'm not nosey. The way the seating is laid out in the carriages, it's quite often impossible not to see what's going on. I used to wonder why people didn't take more care over their privacy, but then these are the same set of people who will happily hold loud and lengthy conversations on mobile phones without any regard for those who may be listening. Listening is really the wrong word though, as this seems to indicate that the 'listener' is making some kind of effort... no: they only hear the conversation because there's nothing else to hear. And so it is the same (albeit to a lesser degree) with folk working on their laptops.

Well, I think I've proved to myself that I'm not a nosey parker, but I suspect a few may remain to be convinced. Either way, if I learn anything on my subsequent travels, I'll share it with you here. Which means if I'm being nosey, you are too. Nerr.

Today's picture: Up or down? uploaded by paulholloway on 21st May, 2007.