Seeing as it’s you….

March 28, 2006

The weekend up in London was much needed - drinks and catching up with folk in Wimbledon was all well and good, but getting back to Anna & Phil’s later on and just slipping into a groove with someone you know so well and haven’t seen for a while - it counts for a helluva lot when life is grinding you down and you just enjoy the good company.

We got back round 11ish and Phil crashed early on leaving Anna and I to destroy bottles of red wine, smoke too many Marlboro’s, raid the fridge and go head to head on some genius PS2 quiz game called Buzz - music quiz show that comes four special controllers and is absolutely feckin genius in so many ways - music plays - questions come up - like song title, year of release, artists name or anything else connected - you’ve got four answers to choose - few themed rounds to go through - sounds standard stuff right? but add alcohol, years of friendly rivalry, smug bragging rites and some sort of forfeit to the loser and it is the best game I’ve played since Halo 2.

Well it’s the only game I’ve played since Halo 2 actually - but still - quality times were had - until some sort of 3am looking hour of the morning.

I also discovered that I may need expensive glasses due to the ”it’s a whole new world” effect of wearing Anna’s for a bit.

However that could of been the wine and the time.

Next morning I took my bedraggled-still-fuzzy-drunk self back early doors - I was intending to put on a number one good-son-angel-boy performance for mothers day - the train back from Big Smoke to the village was broken up 3/4 of the way at Basingstoke, where the train company laid on buses to take folk the rest of the way due to track repairs - bus driver explained to a grand total of five of us that he was only going to the stations listed as part of the train route - although he’d make an allowance for the village before mine due to the station being a mile out of the way in the sticks - I politely asked if it was cool for him to drop me in the next village centre along the road some where (like for example, an actual bus stop) - old man jobsworth bureaucrat from hell said NO!

As he explained in one of the most dumfounding statements I’ve ever heard “you see I only stop at the train station - this isn’t a bus - it’s a train”

....and I just let that hang there for a while.....

.....as I looked around on the bus he was driving and I was travelling on.....

I could of protested that it wasn’t a train - it was in fact a bus - as it blatantly was - I could of protested that he was proposing to drive past the bus stop more or less next to my house, through the centre, all the way up the hill and then deposit me at a train station I would then have to walk all the way back from in the rain - I could of protested that whether he was allowed (you see, he is driving a “train”) to stop at an official bus stop or not was irrelevant as what kind of person would report a bus driver for dropping a passenger off? and if such a person existed what is the likelihood of such a person being at that exact spot he drops me off at during the 2 seconds it would take?

I could of said all these things - but then I would be challenging his authority and right or wrong, I wouldn’t win - I’d just make him angry and then it would be all the more satisfying to take me a mile and a half up to the train station and laugh to himself knowing I was walking all the way back in the rain - no, he was the driver and, by then, I was the only passenger - the only thing to do was keep quiet and hope he’d realise the stupidity all on his own.

I let it brew a while and then we passed a traffic jam caused by Sunday tractors (a fairly large procession of jolly looking farmer types who get their kicks driving at 5mph while a queue to angry motorists fills up behind them on impossible to pass country roads) - aha - suddenly we had a common bond - hatred of the tractor people - now we were no longer driver and passenger at odds - we were brothers against tractors - a unifying force of agreed denunciation for the tractor types:

“Tractors - I might have known”
“They’re going to hell, you know”
“Driving like they’d take a long time getting there”
“Reckon one of those motorists is going to speed up the process soon with a bit of road rage”
“Tractors - I fucking hate tractors”
“And the fat jolly farmer bastards that drive them”
“Aye lad, aye - well said”

Job done - as we entered my village and my house approached I did my best meek and resigned to my fate impression and sure enough he pulled in and opened the doors.

“go on then - jump out quick - seeing as it’s you”

Spo | March 28, 2006