Yesterday was a long day in Dundee.

The length of the day was not helped by the fact that my train from Inverness to Perth was delayed significantly, firstly before departure due to a late arrival, and secondly at Kingussie due to points failure. Being couped up longer than necessary on such a hot day didn’t help the bout of hayfever I’ve been suffering, and so I spent most of the journey sneezing and blowing my nose. As did many other people – perhaps the rumours of a swine flu increase are true…

Anyway, while I was standing in the vestibule of the carriage just as we approached Perth, where I would be changing for Dundee, I noticed a guy near me in the vestibule moving his bags to the door in the next carriage and repeatedly shouting “for f**k’s sake”. He was exhibiting some rather odd behaviour that would suggest to a layman like me that he had some serious mental health difficulties.

It turned out it was my sneezing he was moving from – he said something about germs and called me a “filthy c**t”. Much as my sneezing was probably unpleasant, his confrontational tone and language was uncalled for, and I told him so. “F**k off”, came the response. Clearly he has issues with basic social situations – so quite what someone like that is doing being allowed to travel alone on trains, I’ve no idea.

When we arrived, the change in Perth was a bit of a hairy one – due to the delays, I’d already missed one connection and simply couldn’t afford to miss the second Dundee train, otherwise I would miss my meeting. I had about a minute to get from platform 4 to platform 2, and after a mad sprint I made it in the nick of time.

As I sat down in my seat, the doors closed and the train pulled slowly away, guess who came running down the steps just a few seconds too late? Yep, got it in one: the sweary mentalist himself.

I promise I tried not to smirk to myself, but I am afraid I failed.

As I believe Confucius put it: “karma’s a bitch, huh?”