The Broiled Veal Experience

Yesterday was fun.

Just...such...fun.

Up at the crack of bullshit, couple of hours on a train, going to the day-job office for about four and a half solid hours of committee meeting...most of which was about committees.

Yeah, you heard me, that's committee-squared.
Then back to Paddington, via Starbucks of course to partially revive the committee-dead brain cells.
Got on my usual train at 7.15 last night. There was a guy with a long off-white ponytail sitting in my seat.
"Hi," I said. "Sorry, I think you're in my seat."
"No," he said, airily, fanning himself with an Evening Standard.
I checked the seat number.
"No, really," I said. "I think you are..."
"No," he said again. "I'm in D29."
"Yes," I agreed. "That's my seat."
"Got your reservation?" he challenged.
"Right here," I said. It's probably worth noting that I had on my broad-brimmed brown leather cowboy hat, and standing in the aisle, briefcase loaded, it was hot as High Noon. I began to hear the whistle of the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" theme as we stared at each other. I narrowed my eyes. He thinned his lips.
"Show me," I growled, lower than I'd expected. His eyebrow twitched. A tear of sweat ran down my face. The air got hot and dry and time went away as we stared at each other. I watched his eyes, bit down on the straw of my Starbucks Strawberries and Cream...
His little finger moved, and I drew my ticket out of my pocket, as he scooped his, slo-mo, up from the table in front of him. In seemingly endless, frame-by-frame motion, we brought our evidence face to face.
"Ha!" I said. "Wait...wha-?"
He was right. He did have a reservation for seat D29. And so did I.
"Oh," I said, my Western cojones shrivelling and my Britishness reasserting itself like a popped balloon of embarrassment. "Oh, I'm...erm...I'm sorry."
"Mmm, me too," he agreed. "Oh, wait a minute," he added, working something out in his brain. "I know what it is - I was on the later train, and they only just upgraded me to this one."
"Ah!" I said, feeling my Western cojones swell with righteousness again. So it was a bureaucratic error, and fortunately, I was on the right side of it.

I'd like to say of course that there was no right side of it. We both had an equal right to the seat, but somehow, in the moment, my British nit-pickery saw perfect sense in the logic that because my seat had been allocated to me weeks ago, and his only minutes ago, I had a prior claim to the ass-space. He agreed, and frankly buggered off, never to darken my ass-dent again.
It was only once I was seated and set up ad the carriage filled with other well-meaning schlubs on their way somewhere that one other fact was borne in on me.

"Damn, is it hot?!" I asked, practising my rhetoric.
d texted me. "Having dinner with your mom. How ya doin'?"
I told her about the reservation-duel and the heat.
"Aircon or veal-broiling death are now our only options," I added.
We pulled out of Paddington.
"Message to passengers in coaches C, D and E," said the announcer. "Sorry to tell you, the air conditioning's broken down in those carriages. Suffer, peasants. Meanwhile for our first class passengers, your at-seat oral gratification team will be moving among you shortly, thank you..."

What followed was miserable. Hot, and sticky, and stinking of mayo from the woman across the table, who insisted on sucking down a salad, and her husband, who chowed through some olives and blue cheese. At one point I reached over and stuck a plastic spork right into her eye socket...

Whaddaya mean I didn't? I certainly felt like I did...

Did I mention the go-slow yet? We were stuck outside Maidenhead station for about 20 minutes.
"Something on the track," the announcer frankly, blatantly lied to us and our brains turned to liquid mush and leaked out of our ears.
Twenty minutes later, he came clean.
"Sorry about that, there was nothing on the tracks. Someone'd left a suitcase behind on the platform, and the bomb squad had to come and investigate it before we could go through..."
A guy two rows in front of me got up, gave an impassioned speech about how they were morons, and how the terrorists were winning, and how no-one complained in this country, and how he was going to write to the Prime Minister. I know, given everything, you probably think this is hyperbole, but I promise you, this is not like the eye-sporking or the First Class blowjob team, this actually happened. When he'd finished and sat down, we all said abbbbbsolutely nothing, and avoided making eye contact with him, in case he had a knife or something. He blew up a couple more times on the journey, usually exploding with single words.
"Morons!"was his word of the evening.
And so we trundled to a missed connection, an hour on Cardiff Cental's platform Six, being eyed up by the enormo-seagulls and praising Zephyr, god of breezes-round-the-armpits at regular intervals. Got in pretty close to midnight...

Stick a fork in me, folks...I'm done.

Got up at 6.30 this morning to go down the Trail with Ma...
Unff...