Bruised Anal Glands

The automated station announcement read something like that, although with a stunted flow and no punctuation. Not that I'd be one to complain, as my own grammar sounds like the plaintive wail of a gerbil that has bruised his anal glands in a freak yachting accident.

If "normal" meant trains running on time, a reliable, punctual service that didn't charge criminal fares then yeah, that would be great. At the best of times traveling on our trains is like being charged a tenner for a pint of Guinness and then knocking it over. I feel like I've knocked over a ten pound pint every day.

But they are right, it has been a "difficult time". A couple of flakes of snow and the entire country grinds to a halt. One half works from home, the other half has a snowball fight. I worked from home and then had a snowball fight, hitting a mate cleanly on the ear. I suppose that made up for it all.

My wireless card committed suicide just when I needed it most, so I had to run a 15m Ethernet cable across the flat just so I could continue remoting. And coding over a remote connection is excruciatingly painful, as frustrating as repeatedly dropping one of those teeny weeny flat pack screws under the sofa.

If it wasn't bad enough, I also busted my back, played the worst game of football in my life - enough to make me want to throw in the towel - and got stuck behind some popinjay doing 20 in a 40 zone.

Fortunately one thing did make me smile. There was a bloke on the train with his shirt buttoned so low it made Simon Cowell look like a priest. A priest with a ridiculous hair cut and monstrous ego.