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.

Not sadly a physical metaphor for some flawless athletic performance or even the predictable outcome of finessing Creme Caramel with a blowtorch. No, I’m on fire on the inside according to the giver of pain, who has the thankless job of jump starting my creaking carcass through the power of chiropractics and money.

And while there are hundreds more photos and sufficient tall stories to give a giraffe vertigo only a couple of beers away, I know how much joy you take from my whining hypochondria so sit back, relax and spend some quality time with the idiots guide to anatomy.

The tingling in my fingers escalates to an elbow biting howl as pain marches up my arm and garrisons itself in the shoulder muscle. Apparently this is due to a distorted trapezium which sounds like hated geometry lessons from my youth. All that “how many sides has a pentagram ?” and “What’s the difference between a parallelogram and a rhombus?” nonsense – if only I knew how totally bloody pointless it all was, I could have saved myself much angst and frustration with a simple “sorry sir, I don’t really give a toss”

Anyway, this triangular muscle is the size of Belgium due to a level of inflammation last seen in the Great Fire of London. To paraphrase that oh-so-jolly song “the shoulder bone is connected to the elbow bone and the elbow bone is connected to the penis if you’ve been born unlucky,etc” hence hurty limbs and throbbing shoulder. Obviously I’ve cut out some of the complex medical stuff there.

The upshot other than medical bills that put me in mind of US Medicare is no riding of bikes for two weeks, much riding of the horrible tube and general one handed uselessness if asked to perform any difficult act such as painting. On the upside the newly prescribed Co-codamal donkey stunners are pretty damn powerful. So powerful in fact, they come with a stern warning that the recipient had better not operate machinery or drink alcohol otherwise the world may explode or some such catastrophe. I’m assuming that attempting both simultaneously would turn that into dangerous machinery.

I’m treating that caveat in the same way Italian drivers regard stop signs. Interesting, possibly informative but only to be obeyed on a case by case basis. Still to stay on the safe side, I’ll stay away from the heavy machinery for a few days.

And on that happy note, it seems the sun has crested the yard arm in a fridge opening manner.

Taken from www.ordena.com.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed at least two teenagers as it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood. Officials blamed the sinkhole on recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main.

The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors, shaking the surrounding ground. A rush of water could be heard from its depths, and authorities feared it could widen or others could open up.

Rescue operations were on hold until a firefighter, suspended from a cable, could take video and photos above the hole and officials could use the documentation to decide how to proceed.

The dead were identified as Irma and David Soyos, emergency spokesman Juan Carlos Bolanos said. Their bodies were found near the sinkhole, floating in a river of sewage.

Their father, Domingo, was still missing, according to disaster coordinator Hugo Hernandez.

This really is quite sad but can anyone read “The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors, shaking the surrounding ground. A rush of water could be heard from its depths” and not think “we had a student toilet like that once”?

As traditionally happens during the flipping over to a new year, much posturing and commitment wrapped itself around the quitting smoking hypothesis. I say hypothesis as it has yet to be proven unless you count twenty minutes when you are asleep. Two of us had picked up a nasty social smoking habit, one had extended this into an a standing outside the building five times a day routine and the other had been a packet a day man for as long as I’ve known him.

So well all gave up and it was going incredibly well. Notice the narrative use of the past tense here.

At a hastily convened meeting of the 2007 Non Smoking Club (Strand Chapter), a sea of guilty faces were washed up around the table. “My name is Moses* and it’s been – oh about – 10 minutes since my last cigarette” mumbled the a parody of him being without a fag casting the first light.

The litany of excuses dragged on like the first puff of a crafty fag; “well I’m stopping next week” and “I‘m off to Vegas so I may as well smoke now as I know I’ll smoke when I’m on holiday“.

Surveying this was the man on the mount, smugly occupying the high ground and declaring that aside from two moments of weakness, nary a nicotine drop has passed his lips for two months.

Imagine my surprise to find that man was me! Yes while others have fallen off the wagon and, in some cases, gleefully set fire to it, Mr. Monolung and his expectorant coughing has remained smoke free. Mainly because I’ve been feeling crap but crucially because I’m not keen on dying a horrible breathless death.

I’ve nothing else to say on the matter as this could be construed as gloating. But in lieu of any real exercise, I ran up the steps of Marylebone station last night. Okay walked up, but still did not require medical attention at the top.

Caught in this frenzy of good health, I briefly considered giving up all alcohol for the period of lent. But was advised against it by those closest too me who felt this would make me even more difficult to live with 😉

* Names changed to protect the guilty.

Not all of you obviously. Because while I am totally up for a letterbox widening, ego boosting encounter with an incredulous but insanely jealous postman, it’d just be wrong. And mostly because you’re either blokes or surfing from the safety of a mental ward. Or possibly both.

Still I’m on holiday and that’s good. So are the kids which you could possibly label as a slight downside. And so are everyone else’s kids which is a definite goolie masher when you’re all cramming into the same ball pits, swimming pools, parks, A&E departments, etc.

A&E was almost a certainty when the kids demanded roller blading once I’d vetoed the ball pit on the non unreasonable grounds it represented a fire risk. And 300 baying children violently assaulting each other and being noisily sick is not my idea of a tenner well spent.

The choice of knee pads was a good one. Something for me to learn from the kids.

Anyway Carol and I have turned our noses up – quite rightly – at all that Valentine’s nonsense and just settled for a quiet card each. Congratulating ourselves on shunning the rampant commercialism of twelve roses for fifty quid, a short but expensive trip to the picture shop rampantly commercialised me out of£250 on pictures for each others Valentine’s present”

I fully expect these to rest peacefully in our old pictures home where huge expanses of what was previously money collect dust in a upstairs corner. And because I’m married to a klepto, there’s a pictorial history spanning twenty years of changing tastes. Starting with classy black ash framed Athena prints through an expensive original pencil drawing phase and spiralling out of any sort of control once the kids were born. Well the first kid anyway, poor old Random has only the mugshots from school, and the occasional digital recording of her falling face forward into her food.

It does make me hanker somewhat for my poster of Kim Wilde in her ˜Kids in America’ heyday. That poster brought me many hours of enjoyment during long nights in my student days. It’s a double shame that she’s turned into a bit of an old boiler, and that the poster remained in our dingy digs once it became apparent it was stuck to the wall. I’ll leave it at that should I? Right-O.

Two delivery vans waited until we’d left the house before gleefully depositing a why can’t you stay in all day�” note under the door. Randoms’ bike was one of them and now the only time the courier can deliver it is sometime in 2009. And then only to Cornwell or Mars.

I’ll admit to this being a bit of a guess on my part since they’ve clearly heard about customer service by issuing a number with the card. Sadly they’ve failed to understand what it means since there is no one to answer the phone. Somehow I remained calm while an automated attendant reminded me “your call is important to us as we’re creaming 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} off the cost of this 0845 number“.

Too early for a beer? No, thought not.

It would be lovely to report that the weeks worth of tumbleweeds rolling through this electronic wasteland were a direct result of a life so filled with excitement and joy. This is sadly not the case. Nor have the creative pathways of drivel been blocked by a foolhardy attempt on sobriety.

It’s worse than that. I’ve been busy. But not busy/interesting or busy/useful more busy/bored or busy/work. The latter came as quite a shock but next years’ budgets wait for no one and there is enough inventive accounting flashing through a thousands spreadsheets to keep us in shredders for a year. My thankless task is to catalogue the project list for next year which is to words what the budget is to figures.

To label it merely dull would be a affront to the glory of English language. It reached high to touch extreme tedium, treacled away hours though dreary and latterly become marooned on an island of mind-numbing boredom. And my reward? Well let me lead you in by explaining it was about as much fun as you can have with a ladder. In winter. Which is not much.

In between was nose-in-the-trough Rugby laid on with four course meals, fifteen different ways to get pissed and some nice cheese to follow. Sandwiched between was a rugby match enlivened only by 82,000 drunken overcoats attempting a Mexican wave. It was more a flaccid handshake performed by the terminally uninterested. It put me in mind of a spontaneous outbreak of Parkinson’s disease.

I drove, didn’t drink and felt worthy. And with the following morning bringing a swaying ladder and some Frank Spencer type action with a bucket, I’m rather glad some bastard hangover didn’t join me up there. If anyone feels the urge to understand the mind numbing task that is cleaning external paintwork, please refer to a previous paragraph for a selection of appropriate adjectives.

To complete a weekend lacking a certain sparkle, my eldest daughter “ who lives outside the rules of self evidency; for example don’t try and eat an elephant” is merely a sulky challenge “ abandoned her thousand toys and rigged up a new game in the kitchen. Simply put, it showed a lively seven year old shrieking weee” as she rotated rapidly through open space, defying gravity by dint of hanging onto a cabinet door.

Somewhat beyond the operating parameters of said door I expect, which is probably why we found it on the floor with crying child desperately explaining I didn’t know it’d break”. Pass me the elephant.

Passably grumpy now, I was confronted by an article by that tosser Nigel Havers’ ranting on about how cyclists are trying to kill him. Normally I wouldn’t waste electrons calmly rationalising why the bloke is a complete dickhead but maybe he’s right. I’d certainly sign up to any club (especially if it came with a club) that roams the streets of London hunting down smug pricks allowed a shouty mouthpiece in the Times.

It’d be a small sample but hey we can have fun with just one.

EDIT: having just re-read Havers’ article and remembering how his last badly argued, poorly researched spite was properly put in it’s place, I may just write that article.