“CROSS TRAINRY C**TS” – A Play in One Act

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Nigel Hurll

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.

Odour Cologne – Phil causes a stink in Germany

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Nigel Hurll

This was the title of another of my larger-than-life stories from the old pub newsletter concerning two of the regulars. Richard owned a local cycle business and Phil worked for him. They both attended a big Cycle Show in Cologne for an entire weekend and, in a frank interview later, Richard told me that, as far as he could tell, there had not been as much damage inflicted on the city since about 1944.

The lack of food provided by their accommodation necessitated frequent visits to a nearby hostelry; this was nothing much more than a convivial local pub in a working-class district and on the first night Phil was soon integrating enthusiastically into German society by engaging the clientele in friendly competition. As the evening wore on, the local artisans were warming to Phil in a big way. They also had difficulty remaining upright. During the course of this revelry, Phil encountered two Bulgarian businessmen who were in town for the same show. This proved commercially fortuitous and a meeting was arranged. Several steins later, however, they joined the rest of the customers under the table and forgot to attend the meeting. That took care of Friday – and about half the native population.

Richard recalled that a particular sight for sore eyes was Phil, arm in arm with several inebriated gentlemen, joining in a mass sing-song. This was no mean feat as Phil neither spoke German nor knew any of the songs but, with true British never-say-die doggedness, he accompanied his new companions by simply singing a variety of English words at random – nobody seemed to notice or care. That took care of Saturday – and the other half of the population. The German Grand Prix happened to be taking place the same weekend and on the following night Phil took on the might of the Cologne Ferrari Supporters Club; that took care of Sunday.

To cap an action-packed weekend, someone at the airport wrongly checked in Richard’s suitcase as Phil’s and Phil was promptly taken into custody by two armed policemen because they thought Richard’s nebulizer was a bomb. Phil told me later (well, this was the gist of it): “I never provoke an antagonistic confrontation with a representative of a law enforcement agency or anyone else who is pointing a gun at me!”

Guess what he actually said.

No passport control

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

As I imagine is quite normal behaviour for a 19-year-old, my son lost his passport (he was going to Turkey at the end of the month during which it disappeared) and, in the search for it, his bedroom was given a much-deserved turning-over. One of the things he found was a pair of his dear departed Grandad’s glasses (a souvenir from a previous visit)!

Anyway, after much swearing and grunting, all hopes of retrieving it were abandoned. After he had gone out one day, he telephoned me, saying he thought it might be in the glove-box of his old car, which had died and was rotting in our drive in pre-scrap mode. So, I duly opened the car and, in the course of the several minutes of ferreting about in the front, back and boot, I found the following: 90p in small denomination coins, nothing higher than a 20p, several pieces of what appear to be homework from the school he had left the previous year, one of that school’s text-books, my golf clubs (I thought they were in the garage), a sleeping bag, a Nintendo game that he had been trying to find for some months (it was in the sleeping bag), assorted small objects which I decided I didn’t want to touch, and no passport. I kept the 90p.

We (meaning I, of course) duly lodged a formal lost passport report via the Passport Office website. Needless to say, the passport turned up a couple of days later; the application for renewal could therefore be made. Except we couldn’t find the form which had been received a few days earlier and so had to order another, which we (I, again) did via the Passport Office website. Having received and completed that one, it was despatched with the existing passport. As you may have guessed by now, the previously received application form was found (behind a pile of junk on the landing); I tore it up. Two phone calls from Evening Team 6 at the Passport Office, two letters to Evening Team 6 explaining (1) that the lost passport had been found and (2) that the passport had been lost in the house and that it had not been out of my son’s possession (and a week or so) later, a new passport arrived.

MI6 have probably got a file on me now.

Attack of the hundred-foot caterpillars

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

I mean they had a hundred feet, not that they were a hundred feet long, of course. Or is that centipedes? Anyway, are you sitting comfortably, mes enfants?

Thaumetopoea processionea is a complete bastard, whether it has a hundred feet or not. The Wikipedia article does not actually refer to the Oak Processionary Caterpillar in those terms but you may take it from me that it undoubtedly merits that base epithet – and probably a lot baser. It inhabits oak trees; guess which type of trees were growing next to our mobile home in France? Ooh, good guess. As you will see if you bothered to follow the Wikipedia link, they have up to 63,000 fine hairs (the caterpillars, not the trees) which are easily shed (usually in the direction of holidaymakers from Hampshire, a fact unhelpfully not reported by Wikipedia) and which contain a substance poisonous to humans.

Most of us only came out in several tiny spots on arms, legs and neck (strictly speaking, necks, I suppose), but my younger son is more susceptible to allergies, being a hay-fever sufferer, and I ended up having to take him to the local doctor who prescribed some cream, anti-histamine tablets and – to the boy’s horror – some special soap to be used in the shower twice a day! It was fun watching firemen shinning up ladders, though, with a kind of mini-flame-thrower, burning the nests. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear the inhabitants screaming, probably because they had already been killed by the chemical spray administered prior to our arrival at the site.

In other holiday news, it only rained twice: once from the 14th June (the day of our arrival) to the 18th (the 19th was dry and sunny) and once from the 20th June to the 27th. I went in the pool once and we barbecued once. Guess which day? Ooh, good guess. My older son had organised a tournament for everyone to take part in, having drawn up elaborate rules for each individual element of it; there was table-tennis, pool, petanque, two separate mini-golf games on the site (the brilliantly conceived Birdie Seeker and the Best Score From Three Rounds), a team guessing game called “Who’s In The Bag” and the Apremont Open (a mini-golf game at Apremont next to a café at the inland lake there, traditionally played every time we camp in the Vendée); we even had a cup for the eventual winner.

Well, the weather put paid to the petanque and the hairy bastards mentioned above put paid to the mini-golf on the site, which was closed off because it is surrounded by certain kinds of tree; guess which? Ooh, good guess. Apathy and late rising on the part of some of the competitors (I’m not saying which) and, to a lesser degree, the rain, as the tables were under cover, although your balls got wet when they shot out of the covered area through the open side – stop sniggering – put paid to the table-tennis, which involved playing everybody twice. Next year, we may continue with the tournament, but include some more appropriate events, like The Least Time Taken To Suck Out Snake Venom, perhaps, or The Most Number Of Festering Boils On Two Arms.

Au revoir!

Road to Hell

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

I could bang on about my disgust and displeasure with road travel, particularly on the M6, until the cows come home (as long as they didn’t use the M6 – otherwise I’d be banging on for ever); the notorious section just before Junction 15 to Stoke‑on‑Trent and Newcastle‑under‑Lyme is pictured here with, I think I’m right in saying, most of the traffic somewhat disingenuously Photoshopped out. I just can’t help it – if you ask me (though I know you won’t) it should be called the M666 (or, if you are a pedantic devotee of QI, the M616) but giving one of England’s main cross‑country arteries a bad name is not my current purpose – not this time, anyway.

Some people might think that, whilst driving north and south up and down the highways and byways of the country, all I do is spend my time thinking about what vitriol I can pen in another highway-related diatribe, and that’s why I have to get Sheila to read out the Daily Telegraph crossword clues several times before properly taking them in. No, no, not at all, I can’t hear them because of the ambient noise of the radio coupled with the constant hum of tyre on road (that’s what I tell her anyway). We finished both crosswords on the way up one Monday, but only one and a half on the way back on the Tuesday (I think I had the radio on louder and possibly some more decent resurfacing is required on the southward leg).

The following are simply observations on one or two new initiatives introduced by my very good friends at the Highways Agency (HA) and spotted during our latest trip – quite uneventful as it turned out. The signs which used to say: “Queue Ahead” now read: “Queue Caution” – this has been done, apparently, as too many motorists had been regarding the former as an instruction.

The HA has also instigated new signs at several locations which say: “Bin Your Litter – Other People Do”. The first three words are an admirable suggestion but their effectiveness is considerably lessened by virtue of the accompanying statement which is based, in my view, upon the thinnest evidence. Rather, they ought to say: “Bin Your Litter Even Though Most People Don’t And The Bins At Motorway Services Get So Full That They Quickly Become A Health Hazard What With All The Rubbish Blowing Around The Car Park And Everything Not To Mention Wasps Etc”. I suppose if the signs were too lengthy, everyone would have to slow down considerably or even park up to read them. In which case, maybe they could give us advance warning by changing the signs at appropriate intervals to read “Queue Ahead To Read Next Sign”.

Right, how many words in the answer to 12 down? Sorry? What?