Twice in my life
I have been travel sick.

The first was when I was about 4 years old, on a bus with my mum, and I spewed my ring. She still recalls that day from time to time, but never for the next 30 or so years did travel sickness affect me, until a few years back.

I travel to Shetland quite frequently, for musical events, and much as I enjoy it there, it's not somewhere I want to spend time if there's nothing going on. So one time, when our flight home was cancelled due to fog, we had two options:

1 - wait until the following day, and hope to get a flight, or
2 - take the boat from Lerwick to Aberdeen.

Well, we all decided to take the boat, as at least we'd get home the following morning, rather than gambling on the weather. The rest of the band were grumbling about boats, and how they always ended up being sick because of the rocking motion.

I, on the other hand, was quite looking forward to it. "Oh aye, I like boats. I find the rocking motion quite relaxing", etc etc.

Bad mistake.

You know what's coming.

It wasn't really that rough, truth be told. I've been in a lot worse and felt fine. But 45 minutes into the 14 hour journey, a bit of a swell was getting up, and I was standing on deck speaking to my mate when I felt a bit off. Not nauseous at all, just a pain in the gut. "Hmm, I've got a bit of indigestion", thought I. Nothing to worry about.

5 minutes later I was staring at the contents of my stomach as they made their way into the sink in my cabin. Worse still, the 'diced carrot' had blocked the drain, so I had to squish it around with my finger to get it to go away.

I spent the rest of the night ill, in bed, not sleeping.

Whereas of course everyone else, who had been worried about being ill, was perfectly healthy.

I still have the piss taken out of me about this.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 16:04, 1 reply)

Worst moment on public transport.
Middle of the summer...Blazing heat...Some little old biddy hobbles onto the bus in her huge granny coat, outwrdly complains how 'bitter' it is today. Closes all the windows.

I hate those old ladies!!
(NoStrings Tastes like zombies!!, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 16:01, Reply)

Pubic Transport?
1)Huzzah! Fuck public protocols don'cha love it when you CAN get somewhere by going via the equivalent of the Underground?

2)On topic:

Bristol is well fucked up. First instance:
Back seat of the 9A, going upto Clifton [posh area of Bristol]. There's a mass of hair on one of the seats. It was crinkly and soggy. A tramp must have shaved his pubes or something we reckoned. The best part was when we got sworn at by a load of cider-swilling pikeys - a friend wears gloves, so she was well equipped to grab this infested folicle fuckery and lob at at one of them. It hit them. At the mouth. Score!

3)Bristol, again. Again, the 9A. This time our little confederacy were the culprits...
We'd travelled to Bristol for a 'mad mashup' weekend. Friday night and we're heading to our lovely Bristolian friend's house.

One of our mob had just been fired from his first job, wit a week to go on his contract. He was willing to admit he had not ben the best worker there, but he was no worse than any one else. Turns out he'd had a ferretine subhuman of a boss who'd basically crucified him and slagged him off - personally to boot with crap comments such as "what you gonna do now, go home and play nintendo?" and "you're a fucking cruiser" - when said friend had done overtime in evenings and weekends. There's bollocking a bad worker and there's being a tosser because you can. Profesional, this ferret was not in our opinion.

So we sat there plotting what to do for revenge, to cheer our mate up. For thinking evil is okayish, so long as you never actually carry it out. [Afterall, who HASN'T dreamt about murdering their boss while smashing their testicles between bricks?]

It got to the point where we'd have a 'Satanic ritual' on boss's front drive, in our imaginations. Then the pissed-off mate trumped us all:

"Leave a pig's head on the car bonnet in a magic circle!"

Two seconds later, a lass from oop narrth wins the basket: "It'd be even worse if he was Jewish eh??"

This old woman turns about and STARES at us all. Oh shit. :( Sorry if you read this, old lady. But we were rightly mad.


PS: We're not anti semitic or anything.
(FightingComet got Boost Power on, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:54, Reply)

One L of a sick bastard...
Chicago is notable for many things; insanely cold winters, great pizza, a perennially underachieving baseball team and a fondness for gun violence. However one of Chicago’s landmark features has to be the ‘L’ or ‘Elevated Transit’ trains often featured as a convenient plot device in ER.
First opened in 1892, the L runs tired Chicagoans and fat tourists to all corners of the city. It’s pretty cheap, generally turns up when it should and, as long as you avoid sections of the south side lines which run through less than salubrious neighbourhoods, not too unpleasant to travel on. To outsiders, the creaking wooden platforms and sideways listing train cars can be unnerving; indeed in the last 2 weeks, two trains have derailed, one on an elevated section of the track, 20 feet above the city. No-one was badly injured, but there’s a certain frisson of fear that accompanies each journey, rather like riding an old switchback rollercoaster.

My own personal L horror came a few months ago. I’d been for lunch in Bridgeport and was catching the red line from Sox-35th to the Loop. I jumped in a carriage; it was fairly full and took a seat opposite to a guy who was clearly tweaking. I adopted the “head down, vacant stare” position and settled in. Suddenly, an odd smell hit me. My drugged out traveling companion had vomited copiously onto his hands, knees and the floor around him. I got up to move to another seat; as I did so, said meth-head scooped up the vomit and will a look of childish glee on his face did something that I have never seen anyone attempt to do before and hope that I will never see again…

He started juggling with it.

I was transfixed. And utterly repulsed, to the point where I started dry retching.

As the train pulled into Cermak-Chinatown, with one fluid movement, like a giant disgusted centipede, the entire section of the train that had witnessed this bizarre cabaret got up, exited the train and got into the next carriage.

I’ve been using the bus more frequently since then.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:48, 2 replies)

And trams...
Cycling and tried to beat a tram over a crossing. Realised I was going to fail, so to avoid the tram-broadside I hit the brakes.

Went over my handlebars, headbutted the tram and landed with my ribs over the handlebars.

One minor concussion and a long bruise across my chest. The thing about playing chicken with a tram...
(Squash, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:40, Reply)

Bus AisIes
Many moons ago I was sitting on a night bus on me way home from a house party. I was facing my friend in the window seat and had my back to the isle. We were on the upper floor a couple of rows from the back.

Next thing I remember is lying at the front of the bus in the middle of the aisle, feeling a bit worse for wear and some concerned faces looking at me. The bus had made an emergency stop as some muppet had run out infront of it and as the bus stopped, momentum took its course and I rolled merrily down the isle to the front of the bus.
(Squash, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:38, 3 replies)

Oh thank fuck
I was fucking THIS close to having to do some work.

Erm, train was a bit shit today, no tables free. The humanity.

that'll do.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:31, Reply)

Did anyone else...
...take the back route to get here?!

What a journey lasting a good few days. And that's the last time I use public transport protocols to reach b3ta.

*hugs keyboard*

No more works today!!!
(ShaunyBoi has been surviving fires since, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:20, 1 reply)

Boat transport trauma
1. The Malta to Sicily catamaran. Just about every time I've been on this boat (4 journeys so far), I've come close to being sick. Why do they make the damned thing go so fast! Bloody expensive too! While never managing to puke, I did once come so close that a crewmember shoved a paper bag in front of my face. There are many casualties on this service. I saw people reduced to quivering wrecks on the floor, and one girl who was showing off by spinning on the revolving seats ended up puking up. Serves her right for being a show-off. The first time I went on this boat, it was on a daytrip to Sicily (I had flown into Malta). In lieu of the chunder-inducing journey to Sicily, I had to limit my intake of that lovely Italian food to give my stomach less ammo - this meant not having any ice-cream (although it was November at the time).

2. Hull - Rotterdam ferry. If you're unlucky to take this boat during high winds, take some advice from me. Don't eat anything in the evening and lie down on a flat surface (preferably a mattress). Once, I had to get out my cabin and puke in the sink. So much for my free meal. The person who I was sharing the cabin with then came back and asked how my meal was. I just didn't have the heart to say "I sicked it up in the sink and made a nice chunks-hitting-porcelain sound" so I settled for "Fine, and how was yours?” Needless to say, by the time breakfast is served, the boat is usually in calmer waters.

3. Stockholm to Turku ferry. On the overnight crossing of the Gulf of Bothnia, I was kept awake all night by a bunch of loud Italians getting noisily drunk and puking up all over the place. I took the ferry to Turku so I could explore the town before I headed off to Helsinki, but by the time I got there, I was so tired I jumped on a train straight to Helsinki. Should have got the boat straight to Helsinki instead.

4. Harwich - Hoek van Holland ferry. Finally one not involving puking. I thought I'd make use of the on-board alarm facility so I'd wake up in time for breakfast. Only realised once I had showered and got dressed that the alarm was meant for the truck-drivers who wanted to leave extra early. I had in fact been woken up at 4am and to add insult to injury, the breakfast did not open for another two hours.


Length? Those hypotenuses on the steep waves make it longer.


[EDIT:] Yay! This is the first non-repost non-spam entry not related to the recent b3ta outage.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:09, Reply)

Repost from the 'other' board
Several years ago, I got sent on a training course. Ordinarily, this consists of sitting in a dull room in Slough drinking rubbish coffee, wishing that the poem would come true and not even caring that you'd still be there when the friendly bombs did their stuff. But not this course. This course was in Monte Carlo.

Fantastic though this was, my employer's generosity didn't extend to paying for hotel rooms in Monaco. Rather, it decided to put its four employees up in Nice, and we'd commute by train every day.

As the only one with any discernable French (good GCSE, forgotten, and a handy phrasebook, unread) I was left to do most of the talking. We got by, with my best "je voudrais" and "s'il vous plait" and lots of pointing, catching the train every day from Nice-Riquier station to Monaco station.

Nice has at least two stations (it may have had more, but we wouldn't have cared if it did). Nice Central is big and important and all the trains go there. Nice-Riquier is none of those things. It was, however, close to the hotel, and had several commuter trains to Monaco every day. These facts will be important later.

After a few days hopping back and forth across the French/Monagesque border, it was time for a night out in Monte Carlo. The details of this are best left forgotten, but they involved losing money at the casino, and a dash for the train at the end of the night.

As we got to the station, the train was standing waiting. It was going to go any second. There wasn't time to go to the front of it and read the destination, so I crossed my fingers, prayed I would make my French teacher proud, and, spotting a likely-looking Frenchman lounging in one of the train's doorways, asked "Ce train va à Nice-Riquier?" Ok, so it wasn't brilliant, but the question was simple enough, and it wasn't "Does this train whizz through Nice-Riquier without stopping?" Our helpful homme answered "Oui! Oui!", and, to make sure we understood, beckoned us to enter the carriage.

We began to get suspicious as we zoomed past all the local stations our usual train stopped at. Perhaps this was a late night service which stopped at fewer stations.

Or no stations except Nice-Riquier.

Or not Nice-Riquier either.

Maybe it was an express to Paris? What do the French do to you if they catch you without a ticket? I could have asked our formerly helpful local, except he'd slunk off somewhere.

No, it's stopping at Nice. Now we just have to get a local train back to Nice-Riquier, and not get caught travelling on an invalid ticket.

Yes, "un billet". Singular. At some point in the journey, we discovered that three of our party were ticketless. Not because we hadn't bought them, but because when we'd used the machines previously, they'd printed a ticket for four people on one piece of paper. And now they hadn't, and, presumably, three of our tickets were still sitting in the machine. This too, would be tricky to explain when your railway French extends no further than "Où est la gare?". And no ticket inspector wants to know about the monkey in the tree.

Fortunately, this is a story with a happy ending. Not that happy, as all the trains were running late and we had to spend a half-hour wait being sworn at by an Italian who obviously thought our presence had infected the French rail system with some sort of British Rail Incompetance disease, but we did eventually get back to where we started, unbothered by les gendarmes.


C'est très long
( le brian, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 15:05, 3 replies)

Internet on trains.
I was travelling first class to London. I brought my posh laptop out of my posh bag and sat down for a good couple of hours on the internet using their new fan dangled wifi service.

Anyway I couldnt get on! The staff were useless and didnt have a clue. Whats the point in advertising internet if it doesnt even work! So I demanded a refund!

Turns out it was just b3ta that was down!

Well what else would you read?
(Miggyman, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:55, 4 replies)

Hurrah!
Have something funny to celebrate b3ta's return.

In Manchester last weekend, there was a half-marathon. It was supposed to be specifically for men who wear women's clothing, or those who have had or will have a sex-change. If you met one of those criteria, you could enter.

It was public tranny-sport.


Sorry. Did I say funny? I meant punny
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:52, 5 replies)

yay!
missed you all!!

and whilst we're back, wtf was going on with the district line this morning??
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:51, 6 replies)

I'm going to click "I like this"
on EVERY SINGLE STORY.

Just because I've missed doing it.
( Thinker, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:51, Reply)

hurrah!
hello all!

I just couldn't get the hang of that other place, I'm so relieved it's back to normal now!

*beams*
*hands round cake*
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:48, 18 replies)

YAY!
I'd kiss you all but I'd probably get herpes.
( girlinthehole, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:42, 76 replies)

back!
it's back!
no more work today!
( ascorbate, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:37, Reply)

Dunno about you lot...
But I had a hell of a time getting here... ;)
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:37, 2 replies)

Yes!
* Breaths heavily *

Good to be back in the Motherland! (or should that be Motherboardland?)
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:35, Reply)

*looks around*
*pokes wall*

Hmmm...seems to be okay.

It's good to be home
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:32, Reply)

I'd have been here earlier
but the bus broke down.

*woooooooohoooooooo it's back*
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:31, 2 replies)

YYYYAAAAAAAyyy
la la la la la

I'm sooooo happy.

It was a nightmare journey getting here.... *on topic*
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:31, 2 replies)

Bugger
I wanted to be first to resully the QOTW...

Everything is where I left it too. I'll be checking your profile pages for scorch marks.

*disengages talk mode*
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:28, 16 replies)

YES
I'M BACK
( Cawl, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:25, 2 replies)

Dunno about public transport,
but I can't say I was thrilled with b3ta's bus service recently..
(__, Tue 3 Jun 2008, 14:25, Reply)

"I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so..."
The sister of dear Mrs Boris was working in Japan as a language teacher, so being the carefree young things we were, we decided to go and visit for a couple of weeks. Mrs Boris went out ahead of me on a direct flight to Osaka and I followed a few days later as I had to make an appearance as the Emperor Domitian at a gladiatorial event in London (here's a shot of me - I'm in the chariot...).
Anyhoo, as dad used to work for BA lugging boxes, I could get cheap flights, so I got the BA007 to Tokyo. I was allowed to sit in the BA staff canteen for several hours until I needed to go to checkin, which was much better than the hell that is Heathrow. Everything goes fine.
On board, I notice that, apart from two Austrian girls, I'm the only Westerner on the flight. Less than twenty miliseconds after take-off, every other passenger pulled down their shutters and went for a nine-hour kip, most of them not waking for meals. Being a happy flier, I had to go to the back of the aircraft to look out of a window. Seeing Siberia slowly passing underneath you is a sight not to be missed, even if it is just miles and miles of trees.
During this oriental slumber party, one of the attendants comes out, looks for me and hands over a form. It's a BA questionnaire. I mention that I probably shouldn't fill it out as I'm on staff travel.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" beams the nice lady and the rest of the flight is spent in the galley, chatting to the ladies there. As we all filed off of the flight, they call me back in a rather serious manner until the other passengers had gone. Subconciously, I could hear the crisp snap of disposable gloves. However, after checking everyone else had gone, they presented me with a bulging carrier bag of every concieveble type of in-flight snack as a present for the train ride across Japan.
I even manage to get the right ticket for the train using one of only three Japanese phrases I had been coached in. All was well.
Until.
Now, something that hadn't been explained was that the Japanese have a habit of answering 'yes' to all questions, regardless of the actual answer.
I asked a train conductor "Osaka yuki des kaa?" (Does this train go to Osaka?)
"Hai!" came back the answer.
Thus began the longest train journey of my life.
I'd already been awake for some eighteen hours by this point, so I was looking forward to getting a bit of a kip on the train. As we pull out, I notice that none of the platform signs at the passing station bear any resemblance to those I was expecting to pass. It slowly dawns on me that this train is not going to Osaka.
I get off at some station, somewhere outside Tokyo and study the departures. No trains to Osaka. I go and ask at the ticket counter. Luckily, the lady there knew English very well, so I could pay a small supplement and get the 'Student express' train as far as somewhere beginning with 'G' which I've now forgotten. I should also mention that, due to financial reasons, the ticket I had was only for local trains - no Shinkansen (Bullet train) for me...
This is all very good.
"When is the train?"
"In seven hours."
Five hours later (awake the whole time due to the distinctly shifty-looking people about), the same lady comes up to me and says that I should get the train back to one stop before Tokyo or there won't be enough room on the train to get on at that particular stop.
Turns out there was barely enough room anyway, but I gamely barged my way on and settled in a corner of the vestibule, standing of course. The bag of in-flight snacks really came into its own here. I excited no small amount of curiousity, being the only gaijin apparently on the train and some time was spent drawing maps of where I lived in the steam on the windows. they all seemed slightly aghast when I told them I was going to Osaka by local train. However, ther was a chap also doing the same. He was a student at a Bhuddist monastary in Kyoto, a couple of stops before Osaka. As such, I stuck with him. As we were all standing, no-one got any sleep and I have absolutely no idea how long the trip was. I was already suffering audiatory hallucinations by this point (the highlight of which was 'overhearing' two Japanese suits with one telling the other he would make an excellent subject for his human torture program) due to lack of sleep and this didn't get better.
As night turned into dawn, we piled off the train in a boiling sea of frenzied, but ordered humanity. I followed my trainee-monk friend through an intricate series of interconnecting tunnels to the right platform and found the train. At least we could sit on this one.
My friend started to get a bit weird by this point and was rambling, so I was hoping it wouldn't be too far til he got off. Several more hours, as it turned out. As he left at Kyoto, I stayed on for the hour-or-so to Osaka, hallucinating badly by this point, so much so I initially ignored a Japanese girl talking English to me in an American accent.
Finally, I get to Osaka. As I was now over a day adrift in my travel plans, there was no-one to meet me, so I made my way to an internet cafe, coughed up a few tens of yen and checked my emails.
Mrs Boris and Ms Boris-in-law had in fact moved to Kyoto and had emailed to say I should meet them there. I was too tired to feel even a little pissed off, so I got the next train back. I followed the directions to the pokiest hostel in Japan and booked a bed. I didn't care if they were there or not. I was going to have a kip.
I'd not met Ms Boris-in-law, but amongst the handful of westerners there, she managed to find me and insisted I went out to lunch with them. This turned into visiting a temple where I hallucinated peacocks and eagles. I had been awake for fifty-two hours and fell asleep so soundly on the bus back, it took both of them to hold on to me to stop me falling out of my seat.
I got twenty minutes kip and woke up. After that, I was fine for the rest of the trip.
I'll add another tale of the trip back later...
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 31 May 2008, 22:40, Reply)

Nail sabotage.

My family and I had just been out to Larnaca in Cyprus for a couple of weeks to visit our vast number of relatives. A superb time was had by all and splendid weather was enjoyed for the entire duration.

So it gets to the return flight. Nothing particularly unusual about that you may think, but we must have been about half way back to Heathrow when the woman in front of us decides that she will paint her nails. Due to the obviously rather limited ventilation opportunities of being encapsulated in a metal tube many miles above the ground, the aroma of her cuticle lacquer quickly became somewhat overpowering.

Anyway, after she had finished one hand she sort of raised it up and hung it over the back of the top of her seat to let it dry, resting it not that far from my fathers already offended olfactory centre.

Well, this was too good an opportunity to miss in the eyes of Asbo Senior. Mildly annoyed by her selfish appendage decorating, slightly bored from the flight and possibly light headed from the toxic fumes emanating from her pungent bottle, he decides to exact his revenge. A serviette remained from the quite exquisite in-flight meal and he proceeded to calmly rip it up into tiny little pieces, each piece being perhaps the size of a page ripped from a studious bee’s notebook. Now with the precision of a surgeon performing open heart surgery upon a sickly humming bird and with a sly grin he began placing them upon her drying but still sticky nails.

Once completed the anticipation was almost too much to take. She seemed to leave her hand up in that same position for what felt like weeks. This was a good thing though. The varnish must by now have been fully dried, with the ripped pieces of serviette now trapped in their translucent prison upon this woman’s hand.





Finally the hand was removed. Nothing. Not a murmur. She either didn’t notice, which I find hard to believe or was just very determined not to give us the satisfaction of a reaction of any sort.

Bit of an anti-climax I’m afraid.
(Asbo Enthusiast, Sat 31 May 2008, 21:43, Reply)

Do you know what, I never answer these.
But I had the shittiest journey the other week. I'd had a terrible day so I got on all crying and that, and I have the journey home from hell.

For starters, the journey was to my home in Wood Green, which is bad enough anyway. But all in one night:

There was a fight and I got elbowed in the head, people bled everywhere and no-one helped them and I lost my faith in the human race.

I offered an elderley gentleman my seat, and he told me he was perfectly capable of standing and what did I think he was, crippled? I said, no, I was just trying to be nice, and he said, well don't bother next time if I was only going to offend people. So I won't.

At some point on this journey (probably being bundled about during the scrap) I lost an earring. This wouldn't normally be a big deal, but they were really nice earrings.

I got to Wood Green and my oyster card wouldn't let me out. I went to 'seek assistance' as the machine kindly advised and just burst into tears at the miserable TFL worker, who just let me out the barrier and sent me on my way.

I found out the next day this meant my Oyster had charged my £5 for not completing my journey.


I know it's not like anyone died, and there's no gratuitous nudity or swearing, but it was a really crap 20 minutes or so.
( Woking Girl, Sat 31 May 2008, 20:54, 3 replies)

The Elephant Man
This time last year I was still incarcerated in the delightful Tuscan city of Pervland, surrounded on all sides by lovely rolling hills and those tall trees that look like cigars and walking past huge medieval buildings every day. I am disappointed I left before the Bond crew turned up to film though.

This all sounds lovely and fluffy on the surface, but if I tell you that incest was legal in Siena till about 150 years ago, and that it shows, you may sympathise a little more. I've never lived anywhere where the people are so distrustful of outsiders, and so rude to anyone with a less than perfect grasp of the language, like me. The only place I never got any grief was the internet café I spent a ridiculous amount of time in, and that's probably only because I was their best customer, clinging frantically to the only thing that would stop me from going insane.

As well as the rudeness, I've never met so many nutters in my life. I've taken the last tube to Northwood with less trouble than I ever got in Siena. The most notable culprit was a man who used to get the same bus as me from the city centre to my halls, way out of the city, and who most people would shuffle out of the way when they saw him?

Well, he was the local nutter; would strike up a conversation in thickly accented Tuscan with just about anyone who spoke the language (I am a short, dark-haired girly with skin goths envy so I never had to suffer this personally), but the guy gave me the creeps nonetheless, shamefully because in addition to the same anorak and baseball cap he wore in all winds and weathers, and the fact he clearly wasn't all there, he had one of those huge, painful-looking mulberry birthmarks, that covered his entire face, and if you weren't expecting to see him it really took you by surprise.

My roommate wasn't as lucky as I was; Xenia, being short as me but half the width, infuriatingly stylish and Greek, could easily pass for an Italian girl, snapped me out of a book one evening as she came home banging on the door and as I let her in ran in in her Italian boots like Old Nick himself was after her and practically crawled under her bed.

"What's up hun?" (her parents both spoke fluent English, and so she did too)
"The man... on the bus... you've seen him?"
"Which one?"
"He has... on his face..."
"Oh, I think I know who you mean... yep, he's creepy as fuck. What happened?"
"He grabbed me and then he was in my face like this *she makes a gesture like Eddie Izzard talking about Mars*"

Having calmed her down and given her water, I managed to work out that he'd spent the entire time they were waiting for the bus (it was Italy - the timetable is a suggestion) chatting to Xenia and completely oblivious to her terror, and did the same for the whole twenty-minute bus ride. Even worse, as the bus was totally packed as it usually was at a certain time of night, she had no way of getting away till she jumped off the bus and legged it.

We spent the next four months playing Avoid The Elephant Man, as well as dodging fares.
( Maladicta, Sat 31 May 2008, 20:10, Reply)