Dramatis Personae

• A rocket scientist and his wife – Erucae scientiae et uxor eius
• A man of powerful voice – Stentor irritatum
• A small oriental lady – Muliercula chinki
• A raucous group of sport followers – Ebrius imitatores de Villa Astona
• Several other travellers who appear to have lost their capacity to reason – Multis amisisse videntur facultas cogitandi
• Our hero – Heros nostrum
• Narrator – Narrator

Scene: Coach D – 11.27 Cross Country Trains service from Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth

Narrator: Our hero is in the aisle seat of the pair of seats 17 and 18, which numbers are clearly marked on the grab-handle of the left-hand seat of the two, facing forward. Both seat numbers are also shown on the electronic reservation indicator screen below the edge of the luggage rack centrally located immediately above the seats.

A man and his wife, who have joined the train at the same station as our hero, enter the coach and start to walk up and down, peering at various seats, muttering numbers under their breath.

Man: I don’t understand this odd numbering system, it’s very confusing.

Our hero: So the numbering system is odd, is it? Being that it starts at 1 and the further you venture along the carriage, it increases in ones, finishing at the maximum number of seats accommodated in the carriage? These mysteriously calculated seat numbers are clearly marked on the grab-handle of the left-hand seat of each pair of seats (viewed from behind). Both seat numbers are also shown on the electronic reservation indicator screen below the edge of the luggage rack centrally located immediately above the seats. It’s not fucking rocket science!

Man: Ah! So it’s not rocket science, then?! That is clearly why I don’t comprehend the system, for, you see, I am a rocket scientist!

Our hero: Well, what are the chances of that?

Narrator: Our hero realised his mistake too late for he was then forced to spend the next 25 minutes listening to the man pontificating on the laws of probability.

Our hero: Well, that is extraordinarily riveting stuff, I’m sure, and I’m obliged for your lucid, if lengthy, explanation. However, I haven’t any more time to waste on your good self because there will be a lot more c**ts on this train in respect of whom it will be necessary to record varying levels of exasperating fuckwittery for posterity.

Narrator: As if to demonstrate the veracity of our hero’s assertions, a diminutive oriental lady makes her way along the carriage, muttering nervously, myopically scrutinising the seats and the seated. This in itself may not appear particularly extraordinary except for the fact that she repeats the action five more times over the course of the ensuing half-an-hour.

Throughout this journey, our hero witnesses several instances – extraordinarily common in his extensive experience of rail travel – where passengers are occupying seats reserved for others and, one of the reservee’s attempts to claim their seat, finding it occupied, agrees, after consultation with the trespasser, to sit elsewhere. Our hero is justifiably aggrieved by this and is buggered if he would go and sit elsewhere, particularly when, in one case, it is a little old lady who tells a perfectly able young man to stay where he is while she struggles along the aisles to try and find another seat. Our hero is tempted to explain to the young man the extent of his eponymity in terms of the title of this play, but concludes that, however justified, it is likely to prove pointless since, at this stage, literary devices and words of more than one syllable are likely to be beyond the grasp of the little turd. Also, having been confronted and rigorously criticised for his repulsive selfishness, he might have punched our hero in the face.

Several seats away from our hero, a man with an extremely loud voice was holding a conversation with every passenger in the carriage, well, not intentionally, of course, he was only talking to (actually, at) the man in the adjoining seat, and his proficiency in enabling his monotonous and self-centred dissertation to be audible to the driver of the train about three carriages away without the use of a megaphone would have been an admirable trait had he not been another of the c**ts in the title.

This journey, like many others endured by our hero, was disappointingly typical, with manifestations of the worst kinds of human behaviour, such as that exhibited by a nauseating mob of Aston Villa (it needn’t have been Aston Villa, it just was) supporters who spent the entire time that they were contaminating the train in the vestibule area between Coaches D and E (and spilling into D) loudly singing (in the loosest possible sense of the word) puerile songs containing more than a liberal smattering of base epithets, mostly four letters in length. Oh, and also blocking all the toilets with empty beer cans.

To confirm the veracity of the Dramatis Personae above, several other travellers who appear to have lost their capacity to reason mainly warranted that description by totally failing to get to grips with the ludicrously simple seat numbering and reservation system, which befuddled the rocket scientist described earlier, and, clearly, the diminutive Chinese lady. The behaviour of this group was admittedly more a minor irritant as opposed to the obnoxious disruptive knobheadery of the football supporters.

Our hero was seriously considering dashing off an e-mail to Cross Trainry to suggest that the Company carry a stock of sleep-inducing medication, which the guard could either: (i) supply to heroes of the journey so they can become blessedly oblivious to the constant c*ntishness of travellers like the football yobs, or, preferably, (ii) administer forcibly to the latter, so that heroes and their decent fellow passengers can enjoy the scenery without having to endure their existence – albeit for a short period compared to the average human life span. Frankly, though, in our hero’s view, their presence on the planet amounted to little more than oxygen thievery.

It has to be said that whilst our hero could never be considered a naturally vindictive person, he is not a particularly patient one. This is by no means a failing on his part.