Jean-Paul Sartre

Watch out. Mister Ranty is back.

Today's rant is prompted by yet another baroque headline from London's esteemed fount of misinformation (seen this evening outside St. James's Park tube station); together with a particularly shouty man and a bunch of screeching girls on the journey home (please see posts passim for details of my daily, seven hour commute from Hell).


Please don't let them punish this man. Please, please, give him a job on the London to Norwich inter-city train line. A Dirty Harry style ticket inspector may just be the only thing to save me from taking up America's current favourite hobby and boarding the train with a bag of handguns and a twitch.

Jean-Paul Sartre was right: "L'enfer, c'est les autres".

In the mornings, les autres display generally acceptable behaviour. In fact, most of les autres are fellow daily commuters who have to get up in the middle of the night, then try to catch up on their sleep on the 05:40 to London (my friend Will joined me one day and was astonished by the almost total silence - broken by the occasional grunt and snort - and the sight of hundreds of people slumped in their seats, mouths agape, peacefully drooling).
In the evenings, however, the carriages resemble the hellish offspring of a drunken hen night and a football riot.
So if you noisy bastards don't want one of us mild-mannered but burly six-footers going postal and spoiling your day in a terminal way, let's lay down a few ground rules:

Mobiles on commuter trains: fair enough; trains break down and you might need to let someone know you'll be late.
Kids on commuter trains … hmm … Okay, as long as they're bound and gagged and I'm allowed to carry a cattle prod (by "kids", I mean anyone over-excited and under the age of thirty-seven).

Now … heads up, mobile phone users. If you don't want to be wearing that thing up your arse, here's a little piece of advice (this is best read slowly and clearly, as if to a small child):

• First up: the concept of the "telephone":
If you speak into your "telephone", the person you're connected to can hear your voice coming out of their "telephone". Just because they may be miles away doesn't mean you have to SHOUT to make them hear you.
Related to this point: If you cannot hear them clearly over the noise of the train, shouting at them is unlikely to resolve the problem. They will, in all likelihood, be holding their phone at arms length because you're so fucking LOUD! It also causes other mobile users around you to stick a finger in their ear and raise their own voices, and is therefore counterproductive.

The urge to talk loudly if you cannot hear somebody else speaking is caused by "Basic Stupidity".
We now move on to "Advanced Stupidity".

• "Hi. It's me. I'm on the train".
Whoever is waiting for you at the end of your journey (and one day it might be me, with a nasty headache and a baseball bat), you need only call them if you MISS the train, or if it breaks down. Should your partner be so insecure and pathetic that they need to be constantly informed of your whereabouts, ditch them NOW and get a life. Grow up, for Chrissakes!

"Postgraduate Stupidity" includes the following:

• The constant, repetitive and loud barking of the word "Yeah" merely informs those around you that you are a moron who would lose a drooling contest with George Bush.

• Using your inane laugh as punctuation when you speak merely highlights the fact that the tedious drivel spewing from your mouth does SO not justify your whinnying cackle at the end of every boring sentence. If you were that funny, we would all be laughing. Look around you. We are not …

• Secretaries: If your boss fucks off early, leaving you slaving late in the office, then phones you from the train to ask about some email or tell you something he should have told you before he left: get a new job. He is a worthless piece of shit who clearly does not deserve you.

• In the thousands of train journeys I have suffered since the dawn of mobile technology, I could count on the fingers of one hand the words I have heard bellowed into phones that actually needed to be said. THINK before letting a carriage full of annoyed people know how utterly worthless your life is and how fucking BORING you are.

• Your ringtone is neither cool nor amusing.

As for children on peak time trains? Don't get me started on children … Really … Don't …

One minor fashion item to wrap up the rant (and this counts in ANY public area, not just trains):
Girls: those short tops that leave an inch or two of your midriff exposed?
Listen up:
MUFFIN TOPS ONLY LOOK GOOD ON MUFFINS! Not peeping out over your waistband.
Pull down that top and COVER IT UP! It's putting me off my lunch …
(The only possible justification for exposing/emphasising your bingo wings is as a deterrent from over-amorous males. Believe me; this fashion atrocity is guaranteed to give any man an erection as hard as a damp sock).
No matter how good you look otherwise, dressing like this makes you look ugly and stupid. Don't go there. It's just not right …

End of rant.

Today's homework: Shut the fuck up!