The Rugby Conspiracy

What exactly is going on at Rugby?

Don't tell me - it's not been bothering you? You see it as being of little importance? Well, it's worrying the Hell out of me! You see, I have gone beyond being a believer in conspiracy theories. I now think conspiracy theories are put about by the unseen, uber-powerful hands running the world in a bid to make their one, true conspiracy appear implausible - a sort of double-Mexican trick.

Well, I'm here to tell you that whatever "they" are creating at Rugby it is obviously gigantic and definitely sinister. Why gigantic? - because it's taking so fucking long to build. Why sinister? - because "they" refuse to give "us" any details about it.

For the uninitiated, I am talking about the closure this Bank Holiday of the nation's busiest rail link - the West Coast Mainline between London and Glasgow. Technically, it's only closed between London and Coventry this time but what bloody use is the remaining track? Wanting to flee Birmingham is understandable - almost laudable - but swapping it for Glasgow could best be termed "ill advised"!

No, if you're one of the seven million people crammed into the country's capital and you fancy a change of scene by sampling the delights of Watford, Milton Keynes,
Northampton, Rugby, Nuneaton, Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stafford, Stoke-on-Trent, Macclesfield, Stockport, Manchester, Runcorn, Liverpool, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme, Penrith, Carlisle, Motherwell, Edinburgh or Glasgow - FORGET IT!! Likewise, anyone in those towns and cities who fancies paying £3.50 for a pint of piss-poor beer while listening to gobshite, do-what-as-it-'appens-apple-'n'-pears-strewth-stroll-on types banging on about how General Pinochet should be running this country - they too will have to wait until another day.

This is not the first time this vital artery has been closed down, of course. The architects of this wheeze, Network Rail, shut the line off at Christmas and when it did not reopen on New Year's Day, as promised, they were fined £14 million. Incidentally, what a great idea that was!! We, the British taxpayers, all-but own Network Rail anyway because of the gigantic subsidies we provide and so what we in fact did was order ourselves to pay us a large fine to teach us a lesson!
Anyway, commuters weren't the only ones to suffer as a result of the shutdown. My heroes at Virgin Trains, having secured the West Coast Mainline operator's contract when they lost the Berlin-Auschwitz link, were unable to pack people into their cattle trucks, treat them like shit and make them late for whatever it was they wanted to do for four whole days! Virgin tends to get very annoyed if it is unable to mistreat passengers for so much as an hour.

The point of this diatribe - there is a point, honest - is that the same, implausible excuse is trundled out each time large parts of the country are left paralysed when a choo-choo-no-no order is handed down. Network Rail tells us it is as a result of................."ENGINEERING WORKS AT RUGBY".
I have one principal problem with this explanation/excuse. WHY FUCKING RUGBY? Follow me, if you will, on a brief journey along the logic mainline. Our rail infrastructure is crumbling through years of under-investment - agreed? The West Coast Mainline is approximately 400 miles long - agreed? (trust me, I've Googled it). Sleepers, railway track, points and signals must surely be distributed relatively evenly along the length of the line - agreed? Atmospheric conditions do no differ that massively between London and Glasgow - agreed? The ravages of time as far as rail links are concerned - i.e. rust, electrical faults, vandalism, warping, cracking etc. - do not favour one town or city or one stretch of countryside over another - agreed? We will shortly be arriving at our destination at Logicsville so please make sure you have all your bags and personal possessions with you when you alight - and mind the gap! Yup, why do Network Rail only ever carry out "engineering works" at one awful outpost of Warwickshire when the rest of the network is no doubt in equally dire need of repair?
Cynics might say that Network Rail workmen can't get to other parts of the line to do work on account of there being no trains because the line is shut. Heaven forfend that I should join those catcalls.

The only conclusion I can draw is that, as I said at the outset, something huge and sinister is being built at Rugby. Perhaps it's some labyrinthine, underground city to house our political masters and their corporate overlords after some forthcoming but top secret nuclear onslaught on Portugal?
Is there some Blofeld-type character with designs on world domination who is currently staying with his cat in a bed-sit in Rugby until his new headquarters are built? Then again, could it be that aliens from a distant galaxy have made contact with our top Government boffins and decreed that they intend to colonise our humble, blue-green planet and added the condition "Hmm, not too expensive, mind. And near to some good shops. We quite fancy Rugby"?

Like I said, this whole mystery is troubling me. If anyone has any other equally likely theories I would love to hear them. Until we decide exactly what is going on at Rugby I don't have anything for Grantham.