Here's a jolly festive quiz for you: What does this blog, the career trajectory of Tinie Tempah, the continuing TV presence of Tess Daley and Nation Rail Travel all have in common? Time's ticking... tick, tick, tick. (Adopts patronising, student baiting Paxman voice) "Come on, let's have your answer now..."
The answer is that they are far more incomprehensible than they have any right to be. (Oh yes. that really is the best I could come up with to start off the blog, but they can't all be winners can they?) Actually, I'm pretty sure that the Nation Rail Enquiries Help Line is some sort of sideways glancing, Shakespearean aside to the continuing farce of my life. The name 'help line' is itself a textbook example of knockabout comedy, consisting as it does of a useless voice recognition system which has no ability to understand a single word you're saying unless you bellow like a mental lost in a wood or speak so slowly and clearly that passers by think you're trying to instruct an elderly relative how to manoeuvre themselves to the toilet by mobile phone.
For example, the simple act of finding a train from York to Birmingham went as follows:
Help line: Welcome to National Rail Enquiries. So, which station are you travelling from?
Me: York.
HL: (continuing, oblivious) For example, if you want to travel from Leicester, say Leicester.
Me: York.
HL: I'm sorry, was that "Dunstable"?
Me: No.
HL: If you want to travel from Dunstable, say "Yes"
Me: NO.
HL: OK, where are you travelling from?
Me: York.
HL: OK, I'll look for trains from Liverpool Lime Street.
Me: NOOOOOOO
(How is that even possible? York is a monosyllabic city in the North East of England. There's 3 different words in Liverpool Lime Street!!!)
HL: (2 second pause) Can you repeat that?
Me: Listen to me my robot friend, I do not wish to travel from Liverpool or anywhere even near Liverpool and, in addition, I'd like to find the actor who supplied the voice for this pitiful system, go to his house, murder everyone in his family, then use the sharpened edge of a SPAM tin to cut his stomach open and spill his dinner into the bath like a student after a heavy night out puking up her guts into a handbag.
HL: OK, that's great. I'll look for services from York....
Me: (No words, just the sound of me opening up my jugular with my own coat zipper)
My attempts to use this service and potentially discover the exact time a train will miraculously and arbitrarily appear became so ball crushingly infuriating that I decided to throw caution to the wind and rock up at the station, sans ticket, sans hope, sans everything. I became a soldier of fortune, bravely facing up to potential random ticket inspection and irritating little barriers that, although cutting you off at the waist (and thus being as effective a barrier against ticket dodging as whistling is to a prolonged nuclear assault) appear to be a forcefield of terrifying strength and mystical power.
I'm no bean counter or right wing social crusader but I'm pretty sure that infinite half bearded, Adidas promoting, slack faced cornholes before me have been absolutely fine with not buying a ticket and probably travelled uninhibited to their chosen destination (casino / dog track / crown court) mainlining Carling and uttering unintelligible profane slurs. I felt it was about my time for a slice of the action, as only a middle class champagne socialist could think that not paying for a train ticket is in any way 'action'.
I hopped on a waiting train with a lump of adrenaline in my veins like gristle and a slice of non-conformist pie in my belly, only to be immediately confronted by a planet arsed, humourless ticket inspector with the look of a Bulgarian shot-putter about her and murder in her eyes. As it became clear from my embarrassed shuffling and sorrowful mutterings to the tune of "can I buy a ticket from you..." she didn't exactly have a hardened criminal on her hands and as such spoke to me like I was a five year old who'd waited too long at the Tesco's checkout to tell mummy I had to 'do a toilet' and had dumped a wad of filth into my dungarees.
I managed to purchase the ticket from her and immediately became self conscious of looking like some scumbag who'd tried to cheat the same system everyone else was obediently conforming to. In my head, they had me pegged as the reason travel prices were on the rise; I was the type of junkyard punk who rioted in the streets and caused some corporate office literally 0.2% of diminished returns; I was to be hated, feared and cast out of the window immediately. Needless to say, I didn't consider that I was in any way responsible for my own ridiculousness. That would have been the easy way out, of course. That ticket inspector was now my enemy. Nemesis.
Of course, my feelings subsided and I remembered that I was in fact a massive idiot-o-bot who equated the failure of a simple enquiry system to my own decision not to buy a ticket and subsequently look like a bit of a tit. By immediately creating a 'bad guy' I gave myself an easy excuse which allowed me to differ my own guilt long enough to scoff down the rest of my chicken pasty and look at my reflection in the window without wanting to hurl it all back up and write 'cock eyes' in the chickeny spew with my forefinger, like any sane person would have done.
It worries me that there was something comforting in creating an enemy to pin my failures on, as we seem to do it readily when dealing with larger scale events. Rioters on the streets of London? - it's common looking thugs not cultural inequalities and youth disenfranchisement. Can't find anyone to shoot for attacking us? - it's evil Saddam, not spoilt brattish oil gathering and distraction mongering. Economy falling in around our ears like the conclusion of an Indiana Jones film? - it's (booooo) Fred Goodwin, not a house of cards monetary system that makes pyramid selling look like Wall Street's wet dream. Someone's always to blame, but that someone is conveniently never us.
It suits our desire to feel secure to deflect guilt onto a nemesis, but dooms us to remain insulated from uncomfortable or difficult truths. Luckily, creating a comedy 'Satan' onto which our fears can be projected is something the media jumps all over the chance to do for us, which is handy. All the while, it becomes harder and harder to render an informed debate, regardless of your opinions, because lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) are around every corner and behind every tree. Eventually every issue and newsworthy event will be reduced to 'goodies' and 'baddies' and we're forced to sit impotently booing and cheering on command, like red necks at a wrestling match.
As a result, I have decided to give up on hatred and become the hated by spending my mornings pushing razor blades into birds nests, placing soft toys slightly out of the reach of babies and eating panda hearts. I prefer things on this side of the nemesis equation. As Calvin once said, "virtue definitely needs some cheaper thrills".
We'llmeetagaindontknowwheredontknowwhen xxx
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