- by Owen Morton
All right. I will grant you that from the above title you might be forgiven for not thinking this story is going to be very exciting at all, or indeed for not even bothering to read the article. It sounds like it might be somewhat akin to one of Kate’s stupid stories, the sort she tells me on a regular basis, tending to be along mundane lines. A prime example of her stories is the one she told me on Wednesday, which was – in its entirety – “I bought a pen today. It was one of those glidy sort of pens. I found one earlier this term on the floor and I used it, but it ran out, so I bought a new one. I can’t believe the person who dropped it dropped it, because it was one of those glidy sort of pens.”
This story, however, is slightly more interesting, and – or so I like to think – is told in a slightly more intelligent manner, by a slightly more intelligent person. I have many reasons to whinge about British Rail; indeed, I have a long list of grievances which stretches back at least five years. However, today is not the occasion on which to relate these to you. (In case you’re wondering when the occasion will be, the answer is ‘never’, because merely thinking about these grievances is sometimes enough to make me collapse, sobbing, on the floor.)
Yesterday, though, British Rail excelled itself. Kate and I, heading to see Stereophonics (which is not recognised as a word by Microsoft Word’s spellchecker, though in this case I am not surprised) play in Manchester, found our train grinding to a screeching halt in Huddersfield, of all bloody places, and a voice came over the PA, saying that the train was going to be delayed for some considerable time, because the alarms were going off in the tunnel three miles ahead, and someone was going to have to go up there and find out why. This was liable to take something akin to forty five minutes, at the very least. Consequently, we got off the train, went into the station pub (which, to Huddersfield’s credit, is in fact very nice), ordered drinks, and sat down. A mere two seconds after we sat down, I noticed the depressing sight of our train hightailing it out of the station. Naturally, this had not been announced on the station’s PA.
Fortunately for the continued ‘unbroken’ status of the station staff’s necks, there was another train to Manchester at the platform which had not as of yet departed. Abandoning our expensive drinks (okay, it was tap water and consequently free, but I’m playing for sympathy here), we leapt onto this train and proceeded to Manchester without further incident, apart from the annoying man in the seat in front of Kate, who had a very irritating ring tone on his phone which seemed to be continually ringing. Still, we derived some small measure of satisfaction from kicking his seat.
We made it to the concert just in time (by which I mean we had five minutes to spare), and it was very good. Fine. I was now in a good mood. We returned to Manchester Piccadilly station, in time to catch the 23.22 train back to York. In time, that is, if it had been announced that this train was leaving from Platform 13b and not Platform 13a. Cackling manically at the sheer intelligence of station announcers, we returned to the main area of the station and mindlessly ordered two Burger King meals from a couple of equally mindless automatons who worked behind the counter of said institution.
The next train was at 23.49, though of course it did not arrive until 23.54. This is not late, by British Rail standards. Late is if the train departs more than six days after its advertised time. But anyway, an additional five minutes sat shivering on the cold and dirty platform of Manchester Piccadilly, who’s counting? Well, we were, if no one else. We were also playing with the free toys that we’d got with our Burger King meals: I had some stupid form of pen disguised as a doll, whereas Kate had one of these and a car as well. Neither provided any lasting diversion, but fortunately the train arrived just in time, and we boarded it gratefully, found some pleasant seats, sat down, and proceeded to go to deep and satisfying sleep.
This, you might think, is the end of the story, unless you’re envisaging some form of stupid mistake like sleeping through our station. (This did not happen, firstly because of reasons which I am about to relate, and secondly because our train terminated at York anyway.) But things got even better. The circumstances which I am about to describe are not, of course, the responsibility of British Rail, but I’m going to blame them anyway. At Leeds, my repose was disturbed by a couple who boarded the train. They were perhaps the most irritating couple that I have yet had the misfortune to encounter.
They were slightly drunk, to start with: drunk enough to not regulate the volume of their voices but not drunk enough to be actively amusing. The girl had a bag of crisps that she was mindlessly referring to as a takeaway, and the bloke was gibbering on about his friends. Their voices were of the sort that cannot be tuned out, no matter how hard you try, and they were talking the most idiotic tripe that you can possibly imagine without watching Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. The conversation went very much like this:
SHE: I really wanted this takeaway.
HE: That was such a good party, wasn’t it, with Mike and John.
SHE: I was so hungry, I really wanted this.
HE: The problem is that I think John knows what I’ve been saying about him, you know, all the stuff that I’ve been telling you.
SHE: I didn’t really want this.
HE: The problem is, John’s so stupid, he is, really really stupid, so he just takes Mike’s advice whenever, and whatever Mike says.
SHE: You see, I didn’t want this in Leeds, but I knew if I didn’t get it in Leeds, I wouldn’t want it by the time I got to York either, so I thought I’d better get it in Leeds, because I wouldn’t want it when I got to York.
HE: The problem is, John’s so so stupid, he just takes Mike’s advice all the time, but Mike’s really clever, he knows what he’s about, Mike does, he does, he’s really clever, and John’s so stupid, he just takes all Mike’s advice, but Mike gives him good advice, and John takes it because he’s really stupid, but fortunately it’s good advice.
At this point, I did rather want to leap up and shriek, “Well, if Mike’s giving him good advice, what’s so bloody stupid about taking it? And you – shut the fuck up about your bloody takeaway!” But, of course, I didn’t, because it’s just not the done thing. Oh, how I wish it was. These imbeciles continued with their brainless conversation all the way to York, the girl complaining after she’d finished her ‘takeaway’ that it had all gone, and that there was none left, and how she never really wanted it anyway, and how she wanted some more, and the bloke continuing to talk over her about John and Mike and their dimwittedness and intelligence, respectively, pausing every so often for the girl to interject yet another of her pointless comments about her now-long-gone bag of crisps. It annoyed the hell out of me, and if I ever find you, you two, I will put javelins through your necks.
Kate, of course, slept through the whole thing, so was bright eyed and bushy tailed enough when we got to York to start gibbering on about her glidy pen again.