Trains

I'm going off rattling between London and Cardiff on the train every week. Thankfully, there's a train strike at the moment, so I can't.

It should, truthfully, be fine - after all, I normally spend my evenings watching DVDs and eating crisps, so why moan about having to do it on a train?

It comes down to four things....

1) Trainline.com - we have to use them, but they're hateful. Their machines barely work, and their customer service helpline only operates 9-5... and yet, when it is open, calls are taken by shrill women in India with the volume turned to 11, so it's like having a row with the speaking clock.

2) Other people. Pissed businessmen sneaking cigarettes in the corridors. Fat straight couples going for all the bases. Japanese Tourist girl who giggled through all 400 of her digital camera pictures, with the bleep-bleep-bleep still turned on....

3) ....And children. Bloody, bloody children. Why do people assume all gayers are paedophiles? I HATE children. Girls with their princess skirts and recorders, boys who SCREAM when they've dropped their crayons, the Aled fucking Jones prodigy who sang Old Macdonald all the way from Newport to Reading.

Children are so annoying that they have their own carriage. And do the shoot-me-i'm-so-tired parents take them there? No, they take their squealing spittle merchants into the Quiet Carriage. Yes, the Quiet Carriage - where slippers are compulsory.

The apocalypse will come when 3 year olds start using mobile phones on trains. Then the world will end. Out of shame.

4) Swindon. Is there, oh is there, a tedium quite like sitting outside Swindon for no apparent reason for 40 minutes?