Thank God for the British railway system. It is the envy of the world. In fact it is such a pleasure travelling on the network that the rail companies will often kindly prolong your journey so you can get even more enjoyment out of it. My trip down from Edinburgh took eight (count 'em) hours. That's a whopping three extra hours on the train for no extra charge. You can't argue with a bargain like that.
A break down of all the signals in at least the York area seemed to be the problem. I wondered if the signals worked by wireless technology (another day, another problem with my infernal system - I think I will go back to just writing letters). It's incredible how wearing just sitting on a train can be.
This was not helped by a cheery couple of strangers who boarded when we finally got to Peterborough, sat with each other right next to me and proceeded to have a loud and inane conversation in which they spectacularly failed to say anything interesting or to really listen to what the other was saying.
It was the volume as much as the insipid nature of their comments on how bus drivers can't speak English and how a lot of mediums are fakes, but there are definitely some who actually have supernatural powers which got to me. They certainly never ran out of conversation, though spectacularly managed to make the whole two hours of continuous talking hold nothing of any interest or worth. I am sure people who had been on this train for longer than me (a man diagonally opposite's journey was approaching ten hours by the end of this ordeal) enjoyed listening to their cheerfully piercing complaints that one of them might be late for their acupuncture session.
Now admittedly my patience had been stretched as far as it would go, but I think coincidentally these two strangers happened to have the equal two most annoying voices in the world. The man's was camp and nasal and the woman's erroneously self-assured and booming. The man laughed at everything the woman said, even when there was nothing approaching a joke in the sentence and would say things like, "I know where you are coming from," or "I've been there!" I was wishing he would go back to wherever that was, but the train had ground to a halt again.
There came a point where I wondered if it would be rude to turn round and say, "For fuck's sake, could the two of you cunts just give it a rest for ten minutes, you pointless wastes of spunk?"
I couldn't decide if that would be rude or not, so decided to err on the side of caution and stay quiet (oh why oh why could they not take a leaf out of my book?). I watched a couple of episodes of
Shameless on my computer, but even with the headphones in, the drone of these idiots kept finding its way into my inner ear chamber and thus my brain felt obliged to attempt to translate these sound waves into a form that I could understand. My stupid brain. Why doesn't it have some kind of twat filter on it?
The DVD kept skipping anyway - God I love my efficient new computer, it makes my life so much easier - so I was forced to endure the man talking about how he hadn't been able to resist buying the DVD of the soap opera
Crossroads, which of course he couldn't just say like a normal person, he went into a big melodramatic flourish about his feelings of shame and temptation. The woman didn't really play ball with his post-modern irony and was flabberghasted that he would want to do such a thing. She came up with the hackneyed observations that the walls kept shaking and that people forgot their words (as if this ever needs to be spoken aloud again by anyone - even Eskimos are aware of this cliche). She sounded so pleased with herself to have made such a wise and brilliant observation, but had slightly annoyed the man who was in the middle of his exciting story about buying a DVD (I always like to share such nuggets with strangers - I know they will be interested). When he finally got on with finishing it became apparent that as with all his other stories there was no ending or point to it at all. It was just another bit of something that had happened to him, apparently recounted with no concern for what might or might not make it an interesting annecdote. As long as their was not a second of silence in this carriage, then apparently his job would be done. It was important that the wound springs inside the people who had been sat in this hot tube for the last nine hours, must be wound tighter still, for if not perhaps they would slacken off and lose their springiness. "Keep turning" nasal seemed to be saying. "I will," bellowed his racist and stupid ghost-believing-in acupunctured companion.
And I thought to myself, "And yet if I were to stand up now and without warning punch these people hard in the face, it would be I who society would judge to be the transgressor of its laws."
But I thought, "Fuck it" and beat their stupid faces into a bloody pulp anyway. Even through this drubbing they kept on squawking and it was only once they were dead that the babbling was over - though there was the occasional gutteral gurgling of blood from their cadavers. The rest of the carriage broke into spontaneous applause and then a bit like in
Murder on the Orient Express they then all kicked in the lifeless forms of these annoying fools, so we would all be culpable in their deaths and then Hercule Poirot said, "They deserved it, let's pretend that someone else got on the train and did this and we can all cover for each other." Sorry, probably spoiled
Murder on the Orient Express there for anyone who hasn't seen it. Which must be about as many people who weren't aware that the Crossroads set apparently wobbles all the time - which it didn't even do. I hate the public. Where are Al Quaida when you need them?
