The Dog Didn’t Need A Ticket Apparently

I think I’ve reached the point where I’m collecting tram stories whether I want to or not.

Every so often something happens on public transport that’s strange enough to stick in your brain for weeks afterwards, and this one has been sat there rattling around for ages because I still can’t decide whether the guy fully believed his own argument or whether he was improvising under pressure.

It started with a man sat on the tram with a small dog. I couldn’t tell you what breed it was. It looked vaguely corgi-shaped, but I don’t know enough about dogs to confidently identify one without accidentally insulting somebody’s expensive pet.

The man spent the entire journey loudly talking to himself.

Not “looks like he’s on the phone” talking to himself. Properly talking to himself. Full volume. Just carrying on a conversation with the air around him while everybody else on the tram tried to pretend this was normal behaviour.

People further down the tram were already shouting “shut up” before we’d even reached the final stop.

Then the ticket inspectors got on.

You can always feel the mood shift when inspectors appear. Everybody suddenly starts checking pockets and bags with the energy of students realising there was homework due.

The inspectors worked their way down the tram until they got to him.

“Got your ticket, mate?”

Nothing.

They asked again.

Still nothing.

Then, without saying a word, he suddenly stood up to get off the tram. Which was slightly pointless because we’d already reached the end of the line and literally everybody had to get off anyway.

The inspector stepped in front of him and asked again for the ticket.

And that’s when things became confusing.

The guy suddenly said:

“Am I supposed to have one for my dog as well?”

The inspector looked completely thrown by this.

“No,” he said, “you only need one for yourself.”

And this is where the argument took a turn into territory I genuinely wasn’t prepared for.

The man started explaining that the journey wasn’t actually for him. It was for the dog. The dog needed to get somewhere. He was simply accompanying the dog. Therefore, because dogs don’t need tickets, he technically didn’t need one either.

It was one of the strangest arguments I’ve ever heard in public.

There was a weird sort of confidence to it as well, like he thought he’d discovered a loophole nobody else had considered. The inspector kept trying to explain that this wasn’t how trams worked while the man got louder and louder about how unfair it was that they were apparently forcing the dog to walk home.

At one point he pointed at the dog and said:

“You’re making him walk.”

That was the moment the inspector gave up.

He picked the dog up, handed it back to the owner and said:

“There you go then. Now he doesn’t have to walk.”

At that point I decided it was probably time to leave.

There’s always a moment in public arguments where you can tell things are about to either calm down or become somebody else’s paperwork. This definitely felt like the second option.

Away from tram-related debates, it was also my daughter’s 12th birthday this weekend, which doesn’t seem remotely possible. I still think of her as being about seven years old and then every now and again she says something that reminds me she’s rapidly becoming a full teenager.

We surprised her with her first TV for her bedroom. We’d actually bought it ages ago and hidden it away because originally we were considering it as a Christmas present before deciding it made more sense for her birthday. Kids with birthdays close to Christmas really do get a rough deal when it comes to present planning.

She had absolutely no idea it was coming.

The funny thing is she still seems slightly confused by the fact she’s allowed to just sit in her room and watch television now. We expected endless late nights and immediate abuse of freedom, but she’s actually been really sensible with it so far. Most nights she just turns it off herself and goes to sleep like a responsible adult, which feels suspicious.

We ended up doing a family day out for her birthday with pizza, mini golf and a trip to the Trafford Centre.

The mini golf was good. Pizza Hut buffet still feels exactly the same as it did when I was younger, which is oddly comforting. Controlled chaos, unlimited pizza and at least one child dropping ice cream somewhere.

The Laser Maze though was deeply disappointing.

They make it sound like you’re about to crawl through some impossible spy training course dodging lasers like a heist film. In reality it’s basically a small dark room with a few glowing lines in it where almost nothing happens if you touch them.

You can pretty much walk around the edge and finish the whole thing in a couple of seconds.

The kids enjoyed it, which is the important part, but I came out of there feeling like the word “maze” had done a lot of heavy lifting in the advertising.