One of the many variants of rhyming slang to describe the urban enigma that is Milton Keynes. I tried – and failed – to find a simile for “desperate wasteland” but that should in no way detract from the sentiment. There are so many problems with MK – its’ unending housing sprawl, its’ frankly bonkers road grid system and the little discussed strange outpost of the firm. The latter was clearly the template for BBC2’s “The Office” both in terms of layout and the underlying current of insanity.

But before more of that, first you cannot experience the dubious delights of the town without being flabbergasted by a road system which painfully replicates everything that is wrong with the standard US city grid without capturing any of the benefits. The US system embraces a navigational approach based on triangulation of cross streets – you know 5th street is going to be south of 6th street and that main street is the geographical centre. This makes finding you way around at least a little intuitive.

MK dispenses with this proven system, instead keeping up Roman facsimiles such as Watling Street criss crossed with really useful mnemonics including “V7 twinned with Arse, Alberta and sponsored by Admiral Insurance“. It’s the kind of place that only accountants with slide rules or obsessive internet nutters understand. And I’m pretty damn sure that the SatNav companies had something to do with the construction. Unless you have an annoying digitised voice demanding that you take the next left over two curbs and a supermarket roof, you’re destined to starve in the maze of suburbs.

The town is no better – it calls itself the call “centre capital of the UK”. This is a boast that is only just beaten to the title of “most embarrassing town slogan” by Grimsby and its timeless “Cod Basket of the East”. It is essentially miles and miles of intersecting concrete and branding desperately in search of an identity. So it’s great we have an office there.

My journey to the office floundered at the first hurdle when the SatNav directed me through a complex of lovely, traditional villages that appear to have been demolished to make room for a bypass. If it was meant to be bypassing the villages that it has concreted over, it seemed to have missed a salient point but nevertheless, I was cheerfully informed that my car was now a boat and we were surfing an unnamed river at about fifty miles an hour. I’ll not be telling Honda that the next time I make a warranty claim.

Having finally stumbled on the correct road – sorry boulevard – through a simple approach of inspired guesswork and swearing, I’m not sure I should have bothered. This is the only UK office without any fee paying practitioners and it shows. It’s an oasis of apathy with whispering replacing conversation and any outward expressions of joy seriously frowned upon.

It’s hard to create any sort of social interaction in these conditions – that is until you venture to the toilet. These are the world’s smallest toilets and feel free to sue if you want, honestly any smaller and you’d need to hack a leg off to gain entry. Socially nervous office staff have to relieve themselves into a bucket located under their desk. The rest of us squeeze in and are thrust into the personal space of complete strangers.

Honestly, once you’re a handspan away from the next mans willy, he has no secrets from you. I ended up pissing in the sink just for a bit of privacy.

The office is adepressingly rabbit hutch with the firms’ preferred layout mirroring the geometrically mean streets outside. I ran away and found a coffee bar in twenty feet of green grass and this was a very hard place to leave. When I finally escaped through a navigational approach modeled on the German blitzkrieg, my joy was tempered by the terrible truth that I would have to go back next week.

I’m praying for some late winter snow 🙂

Four blokes in a pub, one says “if you could do any job, anything at all, what would it be“. This isn’t the setup for a crap joke, it’s a semi-accurate transcript of a conversation we tried to have while seeing whose liver would explode first. I say tried to have since much of the ensuing discussion focussed on the vocational potential to be permanently employed massaging Kylie’s tits or whether, at 39, it was too late to play on the wing for England.

Based on the current squad, I’d hazard a guess that you would be in with a decent shout but that’s not the point here. But it is close in that my perfect job would be a sports commentator. How great would that be? Travelling on someone elses cash to salubrious foreign locations and swapping work for chatting about stuff that a television audience can already see for themselves.

There is one problem though in that I’m too bloody English which, at best, is a nasty mixture of jingoism and cynicism. For example, commentating on an England football match where we were being bested by the People Republic of Who The Fuck Knows Where That Is, I’d cut across Graham Taylor discussing tactics with a snarled “oh for fucks sake, a hundred and thirty grand a week and they are still shit. God it’s depressing, I mean how fucking hard is it to kick a ball into a huge goal? I mean really?”

Okay so football is out, what about Rugby? A game I love with a passion but understand almost nothing. And while I could add nothing to the ten thousand offenses that a player can commit at a breakdown by apparently being on the pitch, I’d be able to make useful social comments such as “Brian, surely we cannot let our children watch this, there’s a man with his head up the bottom of his team mate and the referee has clearly asked at least four players to form a fuck“.

Cricket? The only game in the history of competition that breaks for lunch. Patriotism would out I think especially against the Australians “oh come on, give him a chance, let him have another go. He’s a lovely lad and neither of his ancestors sent any of you buggers to Tasmania” followed by a shrill “ah fuck the lot of you. What have you got? Skin Cancer, fuck all culture and a capital city that’s about as much fun as venereal disease.”

There’s almost no sport I couldn’t be chipperly ignorant about. But, frankly, compared to the chance of being curator to Ms Mynogue’s breasts, there’s got to be at least an outside chance of scamming a job.

After spending most of Thursday evening abandoned and nasally impaired, the 2mm of late winter snow predictably ground the railway to a further halt this morning. As usual it was everybody’s responsibility but nobody’s fault with Chiltern blaming London Underground and London Underground going with the like we give a flying fuck option.

Progress to Amersham was stately but pleasantly unexciting. From there on, nothing much happened for the next hour, other than the secret enjoyment of pulling faces at the platform based lemmings who shivered in their non train-ness. Not going anywhere is on the dull side of tedious, but slightly enlivened by chuckling at the less fortunate abandoned on a chilly, snowblown platform.

Yet in another inspired decision, the caring railway company decided the best course of action would be open the doors and cram a few more desperate people in. The reasons are occluded although strong evidence to support an alternative approach were readily provided by the full carriages with people already standing, and a groundswell of grumpiness that was ready to explode at any point.

This explosion came during the third halt, this time in the tunnel within spitting distance of Marylebone. And people were spittingly angry as an ominous silence from the PA system was drowned out by a hundred tired, angry and now “ frankly “ sweaty passengers wondering what the fuck was going on. Trains passed us imperiously on either side, while our stationary non progress was marked only by increasing physical and mental temperatures.

We finally arrived at 9:45. The journey had taken a smidge under two hours. My total commute this morning was three hours and ten minutes to travel 54 miles of which eight of them were done on my bike. This compares favourably to the last Monday morning of chaos but this in now way even raised the slightest of wry smiles on my chill chapped face. I just want to find someone to blame/shout at/dismember with the utensil of hurt – anyone in the CR Butlins uniform will do.

The driver did finally honour us with his dulcet tones imploring passengers to Please take all belongings with you. We have had a recent spate of the will to live being left on the train. You can collect these from the lost property office or by moving to another country.

I’m sat on the returning train as I write this and we’re making slow progress again “ this time apparently due to the price of cabbages.

Maybe I can get a bus. Or a helicopter. Are they expensive?

Last night Chiltern Railways put in a truly stunning performance with the emphasis on ˜stunned’. The 7:15 service mooted to arrive at 8pm actually arrived an hour and a half later at 9:30. Well to be fair, the 7:15 never actually left London, with passengers from this and a previously cancelled train shoehorned onto a live one which finally wheezed out of the station at 7:30

I couldn’t believe transporting this sea of frustrated humanity was within its operating parameters “ there were bodies crammed into every available crevice including the bog and luggage racks. So it came as a nasty surprise when somehow another 50 squeezed on at Harrow.

I was lucky enough to have my own seat and an hour long nasal performance from someones’ sticky armpit located fetchingly about an inch from my face. It offered up a complex mixture of smells rarely sequenced together and for good reason. The almost overpowering BO was tainted by fresh sweat and a hint of cheese left in the sun too long. The physical manifestation of this aural disaster was a dirty, gray fungal like growth staining his white shirt. It was essentially mobile biological warfare delivered by a rejected M&S garment. A year ago I’d manage to immobilise at least two people with a similar tactic so I guess this was payback time.

The reason for our progress best compared to a three legged sloth with a head wound was Chiltern Railways bete noir “ the ubiquitous power failure. This is the third time in a month the entire network has gone dark when someone plugs in a kettle.

But our driver was surprisingly jolly. He would cheerfully announce The next stop is Chorleywood but we don’t expect to get there for at least an hour so no rush for the doors. He also reminded us there was a toilet on board but dashed our hopes that the red cross would be coming through the train with food parcels.

At Rickmansworth our crawl became a shuddering halt and we stopped dead. A physical state all the trapped passengers were wishing on the kettle pluggerinner. And in an astonishing example of hope over intelligence yet more people stuffed themselves into our sardine can. This had the unfortunate consequence of moving the armpit of hell a couple of inches closer to my wrinkling nose. I was already fairly pissed off but plunged further into the kind of abject depression that only an announcement there are four sectors of track filled with trains all stopped on a red signal ahead of us. We will be here for quite a while can bring on.

To divert attention from my aural system shorting out and the nasal passages melting under the continued whiffy onslaught, I began to stealthily read the book of a fellow Chiltern Railways’ prisoner marooned on the seat next to me.

It was a romp of a novel where the muscular Christophe was vigorously attempting to deflower the virginal Melanie in the hay loft. Never heard it called that before – anyway my commuting pal was a bit of a slow reader but that was just fine as we seemed to have all night.

Typical of the evening, just at the exciting climax when a horse stomped into the stable and shot Christophe with an elephant gun declaring you fiend, you have had sex with my favourite set of stairs, she got up and left. Well the book was in French and I was doing my best.

At this time we emerged from a mobile blackout area and carriage lit up with a hundred beeping phones indicating voicemails from enraged spouses. One guy was desperately trying to convince his wife that he wasn’t in the pub but she wasn’t having it. I grabbed his phone and shouted no he really is on the train but he didn’t want to call you because you’re such an untrusting stuck up bitch. Marriage counselling needs no training really, some people just take to it naturally.

The driver came back on and suggested that if you hadn’t frozen to death or disembowelled yourself with a small spoon to alleviate the boredom, the next station might be Amersham. Here the entire platform was devoid of life so I assumed any remaining passengers had given up and taken to shanks pony. Except for two drunks who mistook our train for a bar and spent the next 20 minutes shouting at each other. Their conversation could be summarised as embarrassing places we’ve been sick in

By the time the train arrived at my station, I had given up the idea of applying for compensation unless it offered 30 minutes alone with the chief engineer. And I was allowed to take in the spoon of hurt.