This just in: British Rail Sucks Ass

When I was a school boy, I had a class mate who was this chubby annoying fuck that nobody liked and smelt kind of funny. We weren't allowed to watch PG rated films at school, because his parents were so strict they didn't want him to watch them - which means the rest of the class couldn't. We had a sleepover in the School Library (I don't remember why, the Teacher must have been insane) but the high light of the night was an impending feast of Pizza the School was going to pay for. But guess what, the annoying kid couldn't eat Pizza (Dunno why. Diabetic? Lactose Intolerant?) so the School organised a heap of salads and things instead. Which is the last fucking thing you want to eat at a Sleepover when your 11 years old. And then to add viscous insult to ulimate injury - the kid didn't rock up to the Sleepover anyway.

I don't remember that kid's name (fuck him, I hope he's dead) but for some reason whenever I think of the British Rail Service, I think of that kid. Useless, annoying, worthless kid.

Fucking British Rail. One of many contributing factors that may see me last an entire year without cracking a smile.

I spent 30 minutes at Clapham Junction Wednesday last week. All of the trains had been put on hold, the message boards declaring that somebody had "taken ill" on an earlier train from Central. This is Britain just remember, you break a nail you take five days off work. Somebody is "taken ill" on one train and all of them come to a halt. Piss off.

Thursday night after a particularly long and fuck-awful day at work, myself and a couple of work-mates headed to Feltham Station to find that all of the trains had been cancelled. This resulted in a 20 minute bus ride to the closest tube station (Hatton Cross, one down from Heathrow), and a 20 minute wait for the tube. I grabbed a spare copy of The London Paper (the idiotic free evening news paper that caters for the worn out white collar pleb. It's crap, but still better than looking at the morose zombies you're travelling with) which revealed why the train services had been decimated. According to the head of Metro Transport (who should obviously stop sniffing glue):

"London transit has had serious delays today. It's windy, and a train hit a tree." **

Jesus Galloping Christ. That doesn't even make fucking sense.

It's like the Transport head got bored with the usual excuses, so asked his five year old son to come up with a new reason. End result was a two hour tube ride through Hell instead. Fuck.

But the high-light of this month - a couple of weeks ago at Clapham Junction when I walked onto Platform 15 to find a large build up of people, and none of the message boards working. Everybody was confused, until the Announcer put us out of our misery:

"We apologise for any inconvenience. Due to a signal fault, we will not know when the next train is coming until it arrives. Also, we will not know the trains destinations until we can ask the driver."

Everybody on the platform was dumbfounded, how fucking stupid. But that is exactly what happened. As each train pulled up, the announcer would have to head up to the driver's window with his Microphone, and like some kind of bizarre Talk Show Host ask the driver which stops he would be making. The waiting travellers had to laugh. This is 2007 for fuck's sake, we should be in flying cars by now. The Wild West had a better service than this.

If I was a train driver and an announcer came up to me with a microphone inquiring about my journey, I would grab the fucking microphone and yell

"All Aboard! I'm jumping this bastard off the next bend and ploughing it straight into the fucking Thames! We're going fishing Mother Fuckers!"

But I'm not a train driver, so that won't be happening any time soon.



** In defence of the Head of Transport, England was experiencing Gale Force Winds on that particular day. But who wants to get facts in the way of a decent rant? Not me kids.