Nakizo dons his Tory hat and has a good long moan and proves, to his own amusement, that he really does hate everyone - and everything.
The train network in Britain has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. Passenger numbers have rarely been higher and investment is pouring into this long neglected industry. However, this does not mean that the actual customer experience has got any better, oh no. It has got worse, much, much worse. With under provisioned stations, inadequate numbers of carriages and bottlenecks up and down the country, the experience of travelling by train in the UK is something approaching hell. Recently things have been even worse for us poor souls living in East Anglia. A few months back a freight train derailed itself on the line between Ipswich and Peterborough. Peterborough is the central station where East Anglia hooks up to the rest of the UK, and through which everyone must pass if they are to escape this strangely flat province.Cont... and then some...
posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 7:05 pm
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Now fair enough, a derailed train is going cause problems wherever you are, but as a testimony to my beautiful home county this derailment has caused more than its fair share. Because you see, how does one go about recovering a derailed train? You use a crane to lift it back onto the track! Easy. Unless of course the train has derailed in an area only accessible via old and dilapidated roads and bridges. If that happens, as it did, a crane of sufficient size can’t safely get there. So, the whole of East Anglia has had to sit tight and watch the authorities build a new road, before they could then driving the crane down it.
So, with that over long introduction to my day out of the way, we can now progress on to the main event! Because you see, I needed to buy train tickets. And train tickets are massively expensive since all this extra investment in the rail network is coming straight out of the customer’s pocket. They are however ever so slightly cheaper if you purchase them in advance. So that’s what I hoped to do when I strategically chose 3pm as a good time to go to the station and enquire as to how one best escaped the county.
I was wrong, 3pm, was not a good time. The Ipswich train station, as with most things in the town, is wholly unsuitable to its task. It is tiny. Ipswich has grown a heck of a lot since it was built and trying to squeeze that many people through its small terminal – especially when everyone is asking questions about the new route diversions - causes utter chaos. And queues. Lots and lots of queues. Even at 3pm the line twisted and turned and snaked back on itself several times over before finally coming to an end several metres outside the door. This wasn’t going to be fun. And to make matters worse I was so very, very hungry. I decided that there was simply no way I could face this titanic task on an empty stomach. So I (finally) found somewhere to park near a local KFC restaurant. Magic I thought. With one giant ‘Daddy Burger Box’ on order I went and found myself a seat overlooking the main car park.
The food was surprisingly good and the service, provided by what at first appeared to be a fast food ‘lifer’, was – to my sheer amazement – top notch. He even tried to speak to me. And he smiled. Perhaps he fancied me. Anyway. As I sat there, happily tucking into grease-covered calories, I was about to witness a human horror show the likes of which only Ipswich could produce.
First, three teenage girls walked past in indescribably short skirts. One was pushing a pram and another was fat. They came in and ordered. Fine. Not a problem. The fat girl certainly didn’t need any KFC, and it’s a shame the kid in the pram would soon be popping out kids of its own in little over a decades time. But hey ho. Nothing new there, right? These things happen.
Then from somewhere towards the end of the car park came a gang of about twenty young lads walking our way. All identically dressed in their best plastic jump suits, baseball caps and gold necklaces. Except for one token white kid, they were all black. I was impressed; Ipswich must be growing faster than I thought, the Suffolk gene pool clearly isn’t as static as our reputation would have you believe.
They came in, didn’t order much, sized up everyone in the shop, dropped a lot of litter and then left. Not one cracked a smile. Meh, kids will be kids – I’m sure me and my mates did the same when we were their age. It is a difficult period, a time when childhood games just don’t cut it anymore and the adult games of driving fast cars whilst blind drunk are still several years away. They seemed harmless enough.
Then a little while later a similar looking gang emerged. This time they were all white, with not even a token to their name. Most wore this sort of vacant expression which I believe only comes from hanging around in large groups. They represented a mix of ages from about eight to sixteen. They looked like trouble. They stood around outside the restaurant, taking over three of the four benches, the last of which was occupied by three terrified looking old ladies, the youngest of which must have been a grandma at the very least. The kids shouted a lot, swore, fought amongst themselves, threw things, ran around and expressed a rather unhealthy interest in what these three old ladies were eating. In response the women warily repositioned their spicy chicken wings and bravely soldiered on with the task of eating dinner.
Eventually, after dropping a lot of litter, the gang moved on – in the direction of McDonalds. Yet to their credit, despite their favourite hangouts, none of them were even remotely fat. Which begs the question, why do only girls get fat in Britain? I can’t remember the last time I saw a fat guy. Is it the emotional pressures and strains of feeling compelled to compete in the savage meat market that is the Ipswich club scene? Do they down a bucket of fried chicken for every inch of skirt they lose? I suppose biology doesn’t help. Girls are meant to have wide hips right? Designed for bearing children, I suppose it’s merely unfortunate that they are also excellent for balancing stomachs upon. Whatever the answer I suppose we should be thankful that as yet our young men still look lean and threatening. For it is boys like these who are giving their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selflessly ensuring the continuation of the same system that allows clueless bastards like me to mock them.
So anyway, after their departure a temporary peace settled over the debris strewn car park. Seeing that the coast was clear, the rattled looking old ladies slowly rose to their feet and hobble back towards their car. Then in front of me, on one of the benches came and sat a skinny teenage girl. She wore looped earrings and jeans. Her stomach however, protruded outwards a good two feet from the rest of her body, her t-shirt was pulled up, so as to better display her little miracle to the occupants of KFC. She sat there for a while on her own, looking bored, and eventually pulled out a packet of cigarettes. A drag or two later and another vacant looking, plastic clad drone from the near by housing estate showed up. Smoking like a chimney, as my grandfather would say, he sat down next to the pregnant girl and was, I presume, the father. Possibly. Well, lets assume he is, since after all, I doubt asking them would have clarified matters. So, there they sat, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then, having discarded the charred remains of their welfare money, they walked off together, hand in hand.
Realising that the Daddy Burger was far bigger than I had bargained for I began to clear away my things. The restaurant had mostly emptied since I entered and the staff, brain dead to the very core, had began to turn on one another and were finding great delight in daring co-workers to hit them as hard as possible. I smiled sympathetically before shouting a farewell thanks for their work and set off once more in the direction of the overcrowded railway station.
The patiently waiting mass exodus was still as frustratingly impressive as before so I quickly browsed through the nearby WHSmith’s before finally giving in and buying ‘The God Delusion’ by everyone’s favourite evolutionary scientist, Richard Dawkins. At the counter I joked with the assistant that I wanted to get it finished by the time I had reached the front of the ticket queue. She humoured me and laughed. Bless. The first few pages were pretty entertaining, Dawkins seems to be as angry at the world as I am, and this made me laugh. He even singles out Arkansas for special abuse. I think I have found a soul mate. Anyway, after thirty minutes of standing in a crowded room with no air-conditioning I reached a very irate salesman who let out a short burst of laugher when I told him I wanted to travel on Sunday. He sort of shook his head in a ‘when will they learn’ kind of way. Eventually he found a means of getting me to my destination, which didn’t involve too much in the way of hitching a ride on combine harvesters or trekking through fields. Thankful for his help I ventured out into the rush hour traffic.
Arriving home I parked next to my mum’s Mercedes, came in through the porch and collapsed in front of our wide screen television. I was reaching for the remote when I suddenly jumped. For a split second I thought I had seen someone else’s face reflected in my TV screen. Startled, I checked behind the sofa, but saw nothing.
I shrugged my shoulders; it could only have been me.
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