A weeks holiday had dulled the daily mindf*ck that is the Chiltern Railway alledged timetable. This morning though they made up for lost time by suffixing a passengerless train blasting through the station with the announcement that the next service is cancelled due to a shortage of drivers”. Or possibly shortness of drivers. Can’t they use a cushion or something?
When a train felt able to stop at our station, it was on the understanding that it’d had somehow shed the majority of its’ carriages on the epic three mile journey from the Aylesbury depot. Our extended journey to the capital put me in mind of those first world war pictures showing weary soldiers crammed into slam door trains on their way to France. Only with more crowding and a smoking ban.
We fooled even the old station hands at Marylebone as the entire population of the south east exited on platform 4. They must be going round again” a Butlin’d uniformed railway service operative” muttered, with the platform disappearing under an angry mob of aggressive briefcases and irritated overcoats. I went bike hunting which occupied five spare minutes I didn’t really have but that’s the price of early onset Alzheimer’s and a bike the same colour of the platform. Having finally located said steed, a further ten minutes frustration and advanced stupidity failed to crack the complex code of a single lock key. This new German lock (Abus) was clearly keen to dig in to secure it’s position on this latter day Hindenburg Line and even the magic opening phrase willyoujustfuckingletmein” failed to shift it.
Entire epochs passed before the realisation that my key ring holds two Abus keys finally dawned. Obviously I’d got the wrong one; less obviously I’d failed to check my key ring instead engaging single tasking bloke mode and stuffing the wrong key harder and harder into the lock.
It’s a skill there’s no doubt about that.
If this wasn’t enough “ and after a weeks holiday and a shrivellingly cold commute, it really was “ they’ve only gone and changed the bloody milk shakes. Yes, I can see you shaking your heads in disbelief that the one small station based pleasure has been ruthlessly snatched away from me without even the slightest consultation. Ever since my rigorous health regime of a single milkshake per week, I’ve had a sad but serious Pavlovion longing for sugary based milk product. After a ˜fitness curry’ [we left the after eight mint] with a mate, I arrived in good time to indulge in a Strawberry Milkshake desert.
We don’t do Strawberry anymore sir”
Why the hell not?”
Nobody wanted it”
See this body? It wants it”
Sorry sir, you can have hint of apricot or noisette of lamb instead”
[So gasted was my flab, I may have misheard that]
Rather than removing my custom and starting a platform based campaign to reinstate the much missed Strawberry Milkshake, I grumbling settled for ˜Wild Cherry”
Predictably it was bloody horrible. It tasted almost healthy for Gods Sake! If I hadn’t paid for it with my own money, I’d never have finished it. Honestly, it was that bad.
The tourists are back and just as airheaded as before. The blossom is on the trees and spring is nervously pushing back winter’s bleak curtain. I just knew things were going too well.
Apricot milkshakes I ask you? Surely there is someone I can sue?
Wild cherry? I have an aversion towards wild cherries, though it’s nothing to do with the fruit itself.
Play That Funky Music (White Boy) is one of my all-time least-favourite songs, ranking alongside Althea and Donna’s peerless Uptown Top Ranking as being “song most likely to appear on a 70’s compilation album which would guarantee its instant immolation”.
Honestly, I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate that song. The original is a crime against music in any case, but there’s something which curles my blood even more. In 1991 Vanilla Ice (who, incidentally starred in the classic Cool as Ice – currently not troubling the video charts, you’ll be sad to hear) did a cover-slash-remake of “Play That Funky Music, White Boy,” which astonishingly got into the American top ten.
The Wild Cherry version was almost bad enough on its own demerits. But when you add Vanilla’s* lame-even-for-1991 raps, and his horrible, horrible attempt at trying to sing the “Lay down the boogie” line, which is at least three keys off… this sort of musical butchery stays in your mind for a long time, and is enough to put me off purchasing anything of a wild (or even mildly angry) cherry hue.
So I think you’re stuck with the apricot milkshakes……..
*He apparently referred to himself as “the Ice bandit” ferchrissakes. What an utter knob.
Nick – so that’s your Christmas Present sorted out then – the entire Wild Cherry Back catalogue with bonus Vanilla/Chocolate/etc Ice remix included.
I feel the same way about “D I S C O” which thanks to your train of thought if firmly and – apparently – immovably lodged in my cranium. Thanks for that.
The Ice Bandit eh? Because the Americans are not known for their sense of irony, I’m going to have to assume that was a serious attempt to iconise himself using the medium of frozen water. Maybe they have all been abducted by aliens. It’s a worry.
I have a recipie for blueberry and banana smoothie, which can be made with either live yoghurt, or (more pleasingly, and yet at the same time much, much more sickeningly) double cream. Let me know if you want it, and we’ll have a compo to see who can projectile vomit the most blue…stuff.
Sounds good to me. Would it be tasteless to combine it with a lager chaser?
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