Public Transport

I cannot, with all good conscience, pretend to understand why people prize public transport as something wonderful and desirable.

Yesterday, I had to brave the journey to the Big Smoke and it was a uniformly unpleasant experience, from the dingy station where I started out being completely fucked in the arse by the company, quite literally, "servicing" the route, for forty of my Great British Pounds for a journey of roughly 50 miles. I got through the super-flash and expensive-looking ticket gate, manned by a "Revenue Protection Officer", even though there was only one cashier open and the queue was out the door (can't afford the cashiers, sir!) and stumbled onto a grubby platform where I was further homosexualised to the tune of £1.50 for a small bottle of water.

Amazingly, the first train of the day was on time, and was on time at every stop along the way, although I discovered that it was because the mainline service that shares the ribbon was completely fucked and the stopper had the line to itself. But, the train itself was filthy, not with litter, but with the black grime that comes from never, ever being cleaned. The area where I was sitting smelled like someone had taken a dump in it and it hadn't been cleaned properly. I inspected the seats very carefully before sitting down, but there were no obvious stains.

The train, as usual, was filled with cunts who have no consideration for anyone else in the coach, either playing their iPods at outrageous volume or yakking away on their mobiles at the top of their lungs.

Cunts.

And that's apart from the noise of the train itself, which seemed to be utterly deafening.

Got to the end of that part of the journey and then had to face the most disgusting thing of all, the Tube. Overheated, overcrowded, overpriced, every surface greasy with the filth and sweat of unwashed people, cunts shoving their backpacks in people's faces, iPodogeddon, crying babies, seats that are so dirty that I wouldn't sit in if both my legs were broken, no airflow ... when Alighieri wrote of Hell, he was thinking of the Tube. And, of course, there were delays. Plus the mile-long walks between lines, where you have to dodge, wittering numbskulls who think they're on a fucking beach somewhere.

And out into the open air, where you now have a half-mile-long walk to the place you're actually trying to get to, knowing that in a couple of hours, you're going to have to do it all again, in reverse.

I burn my clothes after a day in London, I don't want to touch them at all, if I can help it.

Forty Pounds, for a journey into Hell itself, via Purgatory. And some people do it day after day.