Well, for once I'm travelling via Arriva Trans-Pennine trains instead of the incompetent keffers from the other rants on this subject. And supposedly a change is as good as arrest. In this case, it's rather more likely that the change is going to be good for an arrest. It's the weekend between Christmas and New Year - obviously, a season when abso-fucking-lutely no-one would consider travelling by train, whether to see friends, to come back from family festive gatherings, or whatever other bizarre reasons people might have to travel.

  Of course, what the rail companies can't afford to do is piss off the business users, so instead they schedule their maintenance work for weekends. And ideally weekends when most business are closed anyway - so yes, you guessed it, the weekend between Christmas and New Year is one of the best ones to choose in order to close railway lines for maintenance. Of course they have to lay on substitute travel - can't just close the service while it's all being brought up to a standard that bears some semblance of safety maintained. By definition, it's impossible for business users to use these substitute forms of travel, but it's fine for the great unwashed, the poor idiots who do ridiculous things like travel on weekends, it's no problem at all for them to travel on buses. Well, I say buses, but that perhaps conveys some form of decent standards. It's possibly slanderous to describe these vehicles as "pieces of shit with minimal comfort, less than minimal seat padding, less legroom than that apportioned to battery hens, a lunatic driver with banging dance music being played through the sound system, barely acceptable brakes (they eventually stop the vehicle, but not in anything that could be described as a hurry) and the piece de resistance an engine that sounds like it's been lubricated with metal filings" but I'd like to see how the bus owners would dispute such a description in a court of law. Can't expect business people to travel in that sort of condition, can we?

  I've just spent 2 hours sat on one of these buses, covering the 50 miles from Middlesbrough to York. By train, this is a maximum of 50 mins, even when it stops at every station known to man or beast. But no, 2 hours is perfectly acceptable by road. Today's travel has been designed for the sole purpose of explaining the phrase "FUBAR", also known by it's full definition of "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition". In fact, that should be made into the de rigeur motto of the train operating companies. It sums them up perfectly. If you look in the dictionary for the word "ClusterFuck", the result is simply "British Train Companies. See particularly 'Trains, Virgin' and 'Trans-Pennine, Arriva'"

  I'm now sat on a train that is already running twenty minutes late, isn't going on the route that is actually advertised on the windows of the train itself (for those lucky enough to not ride trains very often, the route is listed in little placards on the windows of the carriages, so that hopefully retards passengers will know where the train is going, and not have to get onto the train and ask "Is this the train for Outer Goring by the Testicle?" or whatever. Of course, because retards will always sink to the lowest common denominator, this form of information is hardly ever read, and the cunts still ask the fucking questions) and doesn't even stop at some of the stations that were listed on York station's information boards. About half the train passengers are now going to be getting off the train at Manchester Victoria instead of Manchester Piccadilly, and then wondering how the hell they're going to get their connections from Piccadilly. It's a particularly impressive example of how public transport in Britain is fucked beyond all belief works.

  Once I've calmed down and can write something rather more constructive, I think this journey may just be the first of (I suspect) many nominations in the trains section of the d4d awards too. I must remember my camera more often, so that I can get pictures to accompany the tales of woe.

  In the meantime it's now pretty much time to turn the laptop off, and relax with a book. Thank the lord for the world of insanity (and Glasgow) that is otherwise known as "a novel by Christopher Brookmyre".