Plastic Man

Mind The Reality Gap.

The Wardrobe is knackered again and so today I had to be Mr Suited Commuter and join the rest of the unwashed on the 7.35am to Euston - what a bloody nightmare!
The Virgin Pendolino (I think that's Italian for "urine-smelling skip filled with the detritus of humanity") actually pulled in on time but that was about as good as things got. The train, as I expected, appeared completely rammed but then I spied a seat occupied only by a briefcase. "'Scuse me. Is anyone sitting here?" I enquired. Quickly realising that this was a pointless question to ask a case, I redirected my enquiry to the snoozing, fat, beardy bloke accompanying the baggage whom I assumed was the pig ignorant owner. "Tsk, hurrumph, pah!" was the only response - from the bloke, you understand, not the briefcase. Fatshite begrudgingly shifted his briefcase down to between his legs, all the while looking at me as though I had just urinated in the urn containing his mother's ashes, and then suction-cupped his face back to the window, lolled his mouth wide open and resumed the warthog impersonation I had so obviously rudely interrupted.
It turned out that we had 18 buttocks between us and I was left perching precariously on the edge of the seat because I only had two of them. This ignorant, fat, twat then kept tossing (no!) and turning for about 15 minutes, all the while grumbling under his breath, until he at last spoke his only words of our encounter. "Oh God!" he barked as he barged past me and made off! We were midway between stations so he was not preparing to get off but I never saw him again. I think he must have thrown himself onto the rails somewhere short of Birmingham International.
Fatty's place was quickly taken by another rotund object, this one sporting a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. It promptly unfurled a voluminous copy of a newspaper - the Guardian, I think - and began reading some pretentious arts review bollocks. Pither, meanwhile, was skimming through Viz and laughing out loud. This drew sneering, sideways glances from Guardian Man until he too made a sharp exit after spying me reading an agony aunt's column for nuns which offered a number to call for advice on vaginal dryness.
As I neared my destination I decided to vacate my seat and let the disabled, pregnant, pensioner, Downes Syndrome woman, who until then had been standing in the aisle, sit down (joke!) and I made my way to the carriage doors.
It appeared that, a mere minute earlier, a gangrenous, BO-riddled rat with a serious bowel complaint had exploded in the nearby toilet and so I spent the last few minutes of the journey exchanging accusatory glances with the similarly suited and booted business types around me who were also waiting to disembark.
On a more serious note, I took a taxi to my office from the station at which I alighted and so the trip from home to work and back, without my car, took three hours and cost a total of £40. If I had taken public transport all the way (which would have involved taking two buses instead of the taxi from the station where I got off) the round trip would have taken four hours 20 minutes and cost a total of £18.40......and the Government wants those of us outside London to reduce our carbon footprint, use public transport and keep our jobs. How, I ask?