(no subject)
It took me so long to get home yesterday it was unreal. I had to get a tram at one point. By the time I got in I had frostbite and a beard.
These first few paragraphs are pretty slow, but my passage gets interesting … I think. Actually maybe it gets worse, you may wanna bail out now.
So I get off work after some overtime, play some computer games on the production machines with Euan and Adam. Maybe half an hour, an hour - I get my stuff together and leave a little after eight.
I consider walking to the station. It’s a nice walk by the Thames, but the weather looks ready to give way, so I head for the bus stop.
The bus is a little late, no biggie. It arrives, the traffic’s ok - I get of the other end, get into Clapham Junction. I normally get the train from there right on into Norwood, so as per usual, platform 15, check out the timetable.
…
Ooo. There’s a load of confused and annoyed people about. I checked the board and quickly discovered what the problem was. The guy whose job it is to update the little digital display boards had taken a break not long ago, and had clearly spent that break smoking a rather large joint laced with a far from insignificant amount of PCP, crack and methamphetamines. The new ‘improved’ system he’d since designed read thus:
1st 19rq jozxyqkDS HEATH qw!!
Calling at: *several obscure mathematical symbols*
3st 2dzz EPSOM DOWNS @#~1
Looking across from Platform 15, I saw the 20:54 fast to East Croydon about to leave Platform 17. (Commuting 5 days a week has given me a particularly-lonely-trainspotter knowledge of timetables) I sometimes catch it if I miss my usual train home. It usually arrives in time for the 21:10 from Croydon back up to Norwood, which is the perfect time to arrive if you want to bump in to all those charming people who hang around occasionally offering drugs or hookers, you know - the ones who seem totally incapable of buying their own damn cigarettes.
Regardless, I hopped across to Platform 17 and caught the train down to Croydon, whereupon it began to rain. I mean rain rain. Not annoying water falling from the sky rain, more God is angry with his creations and wishes the end of days upon them rain. It sounded like an escaped mental patient was running around on top of the station shelter with a machine gun and a roller-skating monkey.
Then the wind started to blow.
You know - the kind of wind that seems determined to piss off specifically you? The kind of wind that blows rain into those minute cracks between the stitches in your coat, and finds more and more ingenious ways of blowing water that’s dripped off of something rancid directly into your mouth?
Yeah - that wind. That starting blowing. Luckily, the board operator from Clapham had failed to follow me to Croydon, and the displays showed actual words. Unluckily, however, these words conveyed to me the fact that my train was apparently being driven by the board operator from Clapham.
I stood there, getting more and more slightly wet in annoying places when my train arrived.
It’s funny, I remember thinking at the time what a nice looking train it was, for the East Croydon-London Bridge run. Obviously once I boarded the excretious thing, I realised it was, in fact, in all bum-ridden truth, the fast train back up to Clapham.
*bee-bee-bee-bee-beep, THUNK*
“Ah.”
Half way there it stopped raining and I figured at least my second wait of the night wouldn’t be as bad as Croydon.
I got off at Clapham. The second I put one foot on the platform, there was a roll of thunder. And then a flash of lighting, and another roll to follow it.
…that’s right. You guessed it. That determined wind was just that little more anxious to piss me off that night. So determined in fact that it had brought it friends. In fact, to put it more accurately, the whole bloody great STORM CLOUD had followed my train back up to Clapham.
“De-licious!” I said, trying to stay positive.
Within moments, there was that wind again, assaulting my most sensitive and secret places with a deluge of fine water particles. And there was that nutter with an AK and a monkey on the roof.
There’s currently a burst pipe on platform 15 that looks quite comically like it’s taking a leak when it’s raining. Guess who was standing under it when it decided to drop its trousers?
And there he was again! My favourite man of the evening! Mr. Drugs 2005! Typing his crazy timetable up for all to see, so I knew I only had “!£”$ minutes to wait before my train to “!£54235nfd arrived! Thank the Lord for that man, or I don’t know what I’d do!
The announcer told me that lighting had struck signalling equipment on the London Bride line, meaning delays were expected.
Then he told me my train was approaching the platform. I got on it.
First stop, I hit Balham.
The train decided to take a break to catch its breath between Balham and Steatham Hill.
Second stop, I hit Mitcham Junction, a train station I’d never heard of.
…
I got off the fucking train.
I crossed to the other platform, leaning into the storm that was waiting for me there. Scraping my long hair from my eyes, which were now dying of hailstones and gel, I shot a look at the display board.
Next train … back to Balham … ten minutes. Expected to arrive at … cancelled.
I. Shit. You. Not.
The expletive was lost to another roll of perfectly timed thunder.
The rain drilling a fresh layer of flesh from the top of my head, I staggered swearing and cursing into the tram station.
Now half-blinded by the Brylcreem factory that had set up shop on my eyeballs I struggled to comprehend the unfamiliar tram map. I ran a finger across the wet glass from Mitcham Junction to West Croydon, then on to the Terminus. I looked for its name on the display boards and headed over.
To this moment, I don’t know how all the people on the tram were dry. The only explanation I can come up with is that the shower I encountered was about a hundred yards across, with me in the middle. It’s all I can imagine, and I’m sticking with it. The point is, the second I got on that tram I was suddenly the guy who thought this was a fancy dress party. I stuck out like a saw thumb in a hammer factory.
I got off the tram at Croydon and got the bus home. It wasn’t raining at Croydon, but then again if it had been I would have looked like a wet fish.
I got home and gave my Dad a “Don’t even think about it.” Look. He burst out laughing and I went to bed.
This morning I saw two fast trains to Croydon and one to London go through Norwood without stopping while I was waiting for mine. It was twenty minutes late.
Peace, love and no - 'excretious' is not a real word
Mike - XxX
These first few paragraphs are pretty slow, but my passage gets interesting … I think. Actually maybe it gets worse, you may wanna bail out now.
So I get off work after some overtime, play some computer games on the production machines with Euan and Adam. Maybe half an hour, an hour - I get my stuff together and leave a little after eight.
I consider walking to the station. It’s a nice walk by the Thames, but the weather looks ready to give way, so I head for the bus stop.
The bus is a little late, no biggie. It arrives, the traffic’s ok - I get of the other end, get into Clapham Junction. I normally get the train from there right on into Norwood, so as per usual, platform 15, check out the timetable.
…
Ooo. There’s a load of confused and annoyed people about. I checked the board and quickly discovered what the problem was. The guy whose job it is to update the little digital display boards had taken a break not long ago, and had clearly spent that break smoking a rather large joint laced with a far from insignificant amount of PCP, crack and methamphetamines. The new ‘improved’ system he’d since designed read thus:
1st 19rq jozxyqkDS HEATH qw!!
Calling at: *several obscure mathematical symbols*
3st 2dzz EPSOM DOWNS @#~1
Looking across from Platform 15, I saw the 20:54 fast to East Croydon about to leave Platform 17. (Commuting 5 days a week has given me a particularly-lonely-trainspotter knowledge of timetables) I sometimes catch it if I miss my usual train home. It usually arrives in time for the 21:10 from Croydon back up to Norwood, which is the perfect time to arrive if you want to bump in to all those charming people who hang around occasionally offering drugs or hookers, you know - the ones who seem totally incapable of buying their own damn cigarettes.
Regardless, I hopped across to Platform 17 and caught the train down to Croydon, whereupon it began to rain. I mean rain rain. Not annoying water falling from the sky rain, more God is angry with his creations and wishes the end of days upon them rain. It sounded like an escaped mental patient was running around on top of the station shelter with a machine gun and a roller-skating monkey.
Then the wind started to blow.
You know - the kind of wind that seems determined to piss off specifically you? The kind of wind that blows rain into those minute cracks between the stitches in your coat, and finds more and more ingenious ways of blowing water that’s dripped off of something rancid directly into your mouth?
Yeah - that wind. That starting blowing. Luckily, the board operator from Clapham had failed to follow me to Croydon, and the displays showed actual words. Unluckily, however, these words conveyed to me the fact that my train was apparently being driven by the board operator from Clapham.
I stood there, getting more and more slightly wet in annoying places when my train arrived.
It’s funny, I remember thinking at the time what a nice looking train it was, for the East Croydon-London Bridge run. Obviously once I boarded the excretious thing, I realised it was, in fact, in all bum-ridden truth, the fast train back up to Clapham.
*bee-bee-bee-bee-beep, THUNK*
“Ah.”
Half way there it stopped raining and I figured at least my second wait of the night wouldn’t be as bad as Croydon.
I got off at Clapham. The second I put one foot on the platform, there was a roll of thunder. And then a flash of lighting, and another roll to follow it.
…that’s right. You guessed it. That determined wind was just that little more anxious to piss me off that night. So determined in fact that it had brought it friends. In fact, to put it more accurately, the whole bloody great STORM CLOUD had followed my train back up to Clapham.
“De-licious!” I said, trying to stay positive.
Within moments, there was that wind again, assaulting my most sensitive and secret places with a deluge of fine water particles. And there was that nutter with an AK and a monkey on the roof.
There’s currently a burst pipe on platform 15 that looks quite comically like it’s taking a leak when it’s raining. Guess who was standing under it when it decided to drop its trousers?
And there he was again! My favourite man of the evening! Mr. Drugs 2005! Typing his crazy timetable up for all to see, so I knew I only had “!£”$ minutes to wait before my train to “!£54235nfd arrived! Thank the Lord for that man, or I don’t know what I’d do!
The announcer told me that lighting had struck signalling equipment on the London Bride line, meaning delays were expected.
Then he told me my train was approaching the platform. I got on it.
First stop, I hit Balham.
The train decided to take a break to catch its breath between Balham and Steatham Hill.
Second stop, I hit Mitcham Junction, a train station I’d never heard of.
…
I got off the fucking train.
I crossed to the other platform, leaning into the storm that was waiting for me there. Scraping my long hair from my eyes, which were now dying of hailstones and gel, I shot a look at the display board.
Next train … back to Balham … ten minutes. Expected to arrive at … cancelled.
I. Shit. You. Not.
The expletive was lost to another roll of perfectly timed thunder.
The rain drilling a fresh layer of flesh from the top of my head, I staggered swearing and cursing into the tram station.
Now half-blinded by the Brylcreem factory that had set up shop on my eyeballs I struggled to comprehend the unfamiliar tram map. I ran a finger across the wet glass from Mitcham Junction to West Croydon, then on to the Terminus. I looked for its name on the display boards and headed over.
To this moment, I don’t know how all the people on the tram were dry. The only explanation I can come up with is that the shower I encountered was about a hundred yards across, with me in the middle. It’s all I can imagine, and I’m sticking with it. The point is, the second I got on that tram I was suddenly the guy who thought this was a fancy dress party. I stuck out like a saw thumb in a hammer factory.
I got off the tram at Croydon and got the bus home. It wasn’t raining at Croydon, but then again if it had been I would have looked like a wet fish.
I got home and gave my Dad a “Don’t even think about it.” Look. He burst out laughing and I went to bed.
This morning I saw two fast trains to Croydon and one to London go through Norwood without stopping while I was waiting for mine. It was twenty minutes late.
Peace, love and no - 'excretious' is not a real word
Mike - XxX