Ahhhh Valentines Day. A day for romantics to gush over their feelings for that special someone and for the rest of us to be guilt tripped into spending copious amounts of money on generic merchandise that hundreds of other people will also be forced into giving their current flame. And they say romance is dead!
Having spent a substantial amount of time sitting in a pub off Oxford Street this weekend, my good friend Kate and I came to the conclusion that all these lovey slushy vibes flying about the place at the moment need to be balanced out with some good old fashioned ranting. Otherwise the universe will implode. Fact. So the following is for the greater good. Huzzah!
This Valentines Day, instead of declaring our undying love for anyone, we have put together a list dedicated to the one thing we both absolutely detest. And what better way to start than to paraphrase the infamous Sonnet 43…
National Rail, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways…
1 – Your Shoddy at Best Service
Travelling in peak hours is similar to when you’re in the countryside and you witness a farmer herding 500-odd sheep into the back of small van. All packed in like sardines, all standing and all with no other choice but to endure their journey to the slaughterhouse. The only difference is that they’re being slaughtered and we’re on our way to work… maybe the situations are more alike than I first thought.
I guess the only comfort we can take from the whole situation is that at least we’re not as bad as Japan. Those crazy cats actually employ people to squash travellers into their carriages. Thank god we’re not at that point. Although I’m sure it’s not far off. After all, who doesn’t love a game of human Tetris at 6.30am on a drizzly Monday morning? And it’s even better is the summer months when you have to do it all pressed up against the armpit of some sweaty businessman while he attempts to read a broadsheet using only one hand.
2 – Your Contaminated Carriages
In comparison, when travelling off-peak you’re generally treated to an almost empty carriage – seats galore! An ENTIRE carriage all to yourself. Perfect? No. Because no matter where you choose to sit, sods law dictates that you’ll pick the seat that some sticky-fingered kid will have spilt their apple juice all over. And will their teenage mum have used her fake Burberry scarf to clean it up? No. She’ll have stuck the gum she was chewing to the seat just for good measure. So there you are in an empty carriage with juice soaking into your jeans and gum sticking to your arse.
3 – Delays
The only way to top the above situations is to add delays into the mix. Delays are the perfect excuse to cancel trains and reduce carriage numbers, because this is the best way to make the public’s day just that little bit more miserable.
The best thing about delays is the questionable excuse that inevitably accompanies them. Here’s a few I can think of off the top of my head:
“Awaiting a member of staff at …”
“A signalling failure at …”
“A fallen tree on the line at…”
“Ice on the tracks”
“Just nipping to Starbucks for a frappuccino”
“A southerly breeze in eastern Kenya triggering a butterfly effect and causing a leaf to land next to one of the rails”
Ok, so maybe the last two are just exaggerations but it still doesn’t change the fact that no matter what the weather’s doing, National Rail will always find some reason to FREAK OUT and screw up the entire rail network. A bit like that bit in A Bug’s Life where the leaf lands on the ant line: “I’m LOOOSSSTTTT!”
*sigh* …I’m not even going to start about the annual UK Snowmageddon fiasco. Can open, worms everywhere.
4 – Replacement Hell-Buses
The mere mention of replacement buses sends a shiver down my spine. There is literally nothing worse. It’s basically the whole hellish train scenario but placed on a slower, bumpier and grubbier form of transit. So when you turn up at the station eager to get to wherever you’re going only to find you have to spend double the time listening to screaming toddlers and avoiding weirdo’s, it’s a lot like being told you’re being taken to Nando’s instead of The Wolseley.
Not only that, but a journey that was originally going to take you two hours is now going to take you six. You could fly to New York in that time. In fact you could fly to the Costa Brava, spend an hour on the beach and fly back in that time. Replacement buses: just say no.
5 – Stupid Staff
Here’s an area I particularly take issue with. Now, I know that working on a train that goes back and forth from the same two destinations all day must be pretty uninspiring, but if you’re going to work in a customer-facing role you should really learn how to interact with other humans. And that means being able to a – understand English, and b – speak English.
A couple of weeks ago, when all the trains were either delayed or cancelled due to a leaf being on the line somewhere in Somerset, I finally managed to find a train leaving within the next five minutes and with my home town being the first stop. The main board said so, the board on the platform said so and the guard standing by the train where I got on also said so. Brilliant!
Only it wasn’t brilliant at all. Half an hour later, as my train should’ve been pulling into my stop, we were still going at full speed. Then we slowed down but only enough to see my station move past me at 10mph then fade into the darkness. 45 minutes later and there I was at my mystery destination, pretty much on the south coast, and having to fork out more money in order to get home. Thanks a lot National Rail. Not only had the doofus on the platform lied to me, but the minion of satan who checked my ticket on the train also failed to mention I was on the wrong one.
6 – Prices
It’s like paying to be kicked in the face. I know people who pay over a third of their salary in order to commute, and what do they get in return? All of the above.
Every January, in some kind of sadistic attempt to thwart any New Year glee, up go the train fares. Fair enough it's the start of the year so putting them up then sort of makes good sense, but why pick a time when everyone’s broke, slightly fatter than they should be and upset that they have to go back to the office? Why? WHY????
Then there’s the weather to contend with. January – the month equivalent of finding a load of grotty tealeaves in the bottom of your mug: miserable and surprising in a bad way. January guarantees rain, gales and snow. So when you’re stuck on a train just outside of Clapham Junction because there’s 1mm of snow in Essex, you begin to resent the fact that you’ve actually paid through the nose for this experience. Luckily though, thanks to the amount of morbidly obese people taking up two seats on trains these days, if you're stuck long enough for cannibalism to become an option, be safe in the knowledge that the fatties will last you at least a week. Every cloud and all that!
So in a nut shell… National Rail, YOU SUCK.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment