Eisenbahn - Railway

Everyone complains about Britain’s trains. They’re never on time. They’re far too expensive. They’re far too crowded. Too hot. Too cold. Too smelly. Noisy, dirty, slow. Full of gays, foreigners and paedos. I should mention that these made-up opinions were gathered outside my local National Front disco, so the margin of bigot-error may be a little above average. I feel it’s my duty (or rather what I‘ve been made to do by default for lack of any other ideas) to rebuke each of these gripes one by one. Or maybe two by one, but certainly not three by two.
So never on time, eh? I blame these people’s watches. They’ve probably just all broken. Next, too expensive? Well if you’re a chump and choose to travel during commuter hours, of course it’s gonna be a couple of hundred thousand per journey. If you have to get to work in a morning and the train is your only option, just call in sick. That or walk. Or even get a cheaper ticket to a different destination. A return ticket from Norwich to Great Yarmouth during peak times only costs £7.80, while Norwich to London is a whopping £82! Why bother working for that poncy law firm when you could be sipping icy margaritas in a deprived coast town? Now, too crowded. The easiest solution would be to buy more tickets. If you’re a moaning space-whore who really cares that much, book out an entire carriage or shut your face. Too hot? Get naked. If you’re worried about sex pests perving their load off, just start murmuring mental-sounding gibberish about your love for rice cookers, cactuses (or cacti) and chomping off cocks. Too cold? Everyone knows the first thing to pack before a train journey is kindling and firewood. If you’re feeling chilly between Norwich and Cromer, getting a small blaze on the go is a basic human right. Exercise it! Too smelly? Making an equally bad smell will cancel out the original one - so stuff your face with pickled eggs, chilli and beans the night before to freshen the air instead of bitching about it. Noisy? Well people just suck, and you can’t blame National Express for that. Even in the quiet coach they’ll shout into their phones about those untapped markets, target demographics, and who got bummed on Big Brother the previous night - you just have to grin and bear it. Or murder everyone onboard operating above twenty decibels. But then that could get tedious five days a week, even if you are partial to a bit of inconsiderate prick-slaying. Another option would be to simply contribute to fuck-irritating sound mix with your own banging Ipod tunes, but of course you’d be running the risk of being caught in someone else’s bloody noise-rage massacre. Dirtiness is next to slowliness, which both have a simple, wordcount-saving solution: drugs. Finally, those troublesome gays, foreigners and paedos. Personally, and rather boringly, I don’t feel in the least bit threatened by homosexuals or immigrants, and as for the naughty men, I’m secure enough in my own age to not give the slightest of shits.

An|weisen - To Instruct

I’m possibly the worst person to instruct anyone in doing pretty much anything. If I had a special power, it’d be Super-Inept Verbal Communication, with a minor in unjustified mid-sentence first-letter capitalisation. I find it difficult to explain anything, from that hilarious exchange with a Peter Sutcliffe look-alike in Tesco Metro, to the plot of that really clever Jonathan Creek episode where the killer time-shifted his murder by cuing up a CD recording of a struggle taking place to play two hours later, but somehow (Mr Creek deduces precisely why when she answers “yes” to the “Do you buy your fish food at the market?” question) an old woman hears the CD in her sleep the night before the offing and convinces herself she can see the future. If that made any sort of sense textually, then hooray! But to get a feel for my spoken-word account, just divide that written comprehension factor by about thirty two. Then down eight pints of Best and a bottle of Cilit Bang. I’m not kidding. Well maybe a little - I am aiming for slightly funny after all. So don’t try drinking Cilit Bang - instead ask yourself, What Would Barry Scott Do? and you’ll be fine, if not still very drunk and confused. So anyway, getting back on tenuous point, even the simplest of descriptive or explanatory things I struggle to get out, like a fat kid from a swimming pool. I’ll open my mouth to comment on a situation without thinking of the inarticulate mess that’ll inevitably follow. After committing to a story I shit myself and usually look for an easy out, like “Actually it’s really uninteresting,” or “Look out! There’s a massive fucking spider!” This works less effectively when there are no spiders or I’ve introduced it enthusiastically by saying “Oooh! An even more crazy thing happened to me this time…” Balls. A Chronologically muddled and disordered heap of monologued turd almost always results, casting an awkward silence someone will invariably break with talk of last night’s TV or girls with big tits.

So (and I’m getting closer to the point of this piece than ever before), when it came to showing the newbie projectionist at work our basic operational procedures and explaining why we do certain things, I felt the same uneasy awkwardness I get with any public speaking. Even though I was talking about a subject I knew very well, I sounded like a bumbling, incompetent idiot. Boohoo. Super-Inept Verbal Communication with a minor in unjustified mid-sentence first-letter capitalisation really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now, as I’ve reached a particularly sorry and depressing conclusion, there’s clearly no way of ending this entry on an even slightly funny note. Instead I’ll simply say Tits To It All and be done with it.