Space Invasion

Made a vow today (9 May) never to go on a National Express coach again, even if bargain bucket special offers continue to be thrown at me. My arse and back are so sore now I can barely sit on the lavatory and fart. A cheap 2 hour journey from London Victoria to Stansted Airport turned into almost a 4 hour journey with an accident in Golders Green then again, more serious this time, on the M25. If I could have slept then the inconvenience may have been bearable, but throughout the entire journey I was sandwiched between a peanut crunching monster and a manic photographer.

Behind me sat a fat German who worked his way through several sacks of dry roasted nuts and believe me there is no worse a stench than the breath of a German who has devoured countless dry roasted nuts, I should add that the coach was overflowing, there was nowhere to escape.

In front of me sat a plump and excitable Japanese woman in her mid-twenties who held in her hands a complex-looking camera with an enormous lens, the type you see behind the goals at football matches. The problem was not the camera as such, It was more to do with the woman’s obsession with snapping at anything that moved, in fact she snapped at anything a sane human being wouldn’t dream of snapping at. She was demented. She snapped several times at a row of terraced houses in Golders Green, had she never seen a house before? Her bouncing around must have annoyed her friend, who was motionless for the entire journey.

She snapped her hands, her face and at the inside of the coach. She snapped at M25 darkness, several times, she also snapped at pylons, and at anything and everything and with every snap came an irritating click that appeared to emanate from a micro loudspeaker, followed by an even more irritating whirring sound.

Every so often her friend groaned out something in Japanese, probably something like good god woman has someone let off a firecracker into your arsehole, or something similar. She ignored him of course, as she continued to photograph his features.
Arriving at Stansted Airport, thoroughly exhausted, the manic snapper stood, wobbled along the aisle, and I’m not kidding, carried on snapping along in front of her. If anything her frenzy heightened when she spotted the terminal and continued snapping at the building. As she disappeared behind the automatic doors of the Departures lounge I sparred a thought for the poor bastards who were about to share space in an aeroplane with this complete fruitcake.