On our way back home from central London yesterday afternoon. Three trains: Bakerloo line, Victoria line, overground.
Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus.
Quite crowded., but got a seat. I was suddenly aware out of the corner of my eye of a bloke three seats down lurching forward. My thought was he's about to be sick. I look over and I see him slumped forward over a huge fastfood container, shovelling in great plastic forkfuls of what looked like white slimy worms covered in vomit, but I suspect was some sort of glutinous noodle dish, into his ravenous and gaping maw, accompanied by loud slurping noises.
There was no pause between mouthfuls. It was a continuous, loud, wet, oderous and messy operation. If he'd crouched on the seat and had a loose bowel movement, it could not have been more disgusting. Next to him was a small companion, I assume his son, who was nibbling unethusiastically on a sandwich.
When he finally finished the last of the noodles, helped down with a wet, gurgling draw on his iced hazelnut syrup frappacino with extra whipped cream and a fried egg, he reached over, again without pause, swiped the remnants of his son's sandwich, and stuffed that in as well.
Mercifully, we reached our station and I was able to bolt from the carriage before he started gnawing on his son's soft body parts.
Victoria Line to Finsbury Park.
So I'm sitting there trying to expunge the horrific pictures from my mind, when I am distracted by the unmistakable sound of crisp bags being pulled open, and see two pasty-faced, blubbery teenage boys sitting across from me, slouched down and legs wide apart, sprawling louchely across the seats. They each have an open sackful of Doritos, a gallon container of some dayglo orange-coloured sports (sports. Ha!!) drink, and a six-inch thick triple decker sandwich that seemed to be filled with mayonnaise, bacon, sausage, egg, and any number of other sloppy, multicoloured ingedients. The smell that enveloped me was reminiscent of my food recylcing bin on a hot summer's day.
The boys then proceeded to throw chubby handfuls of everything in the vague direction of their pieholes, splattering their faces, their clothes, the seats and probably the ceiling with gobbets of tortilla-encrusted slime.
Just as I was about to get up and ram the tips of my fingers in their eyes, we arrived at Finsbury Park. I staggered up the spiral staircase, lurched out on to the overground platform, and gulped down huge grateful lungfuls of (comparatively) fresh air, and eyefuls of (comparatively) bright sunlight.
Overground to Alexandra Palace.
We get on the train and look carefully around. Pretty empty. We go to the back of the carriage and sit as far away as possible from other carbon based life forms and sit down facing away from the doors.
Next stop. Harringey. We hear shuffling, and then someone sitting down heavily in the seat behind us, followed by the sound of something being unwrapped, and then the sound of a huge ravenous sow rooting through pigswill and munching down on a dead rat, all to the accompaniment of the warm, fetid steamy smell of the bins outside a kebab shop. If I had found a used nappy on the floor and buried my head in it, I could not have been more disgusted.
We get up for our stop and I give the abomination troughing down his kebab a filthy look as I pass by. The bull-headed slob raises his dull, unthinking, bovine, malevolent, piggy little eyes to mine. His jaws stop moving, as if the brain activity required to use his eyes and chew at the same time, is too much for the small fragment of brain lodged in his skull. I realise that any comment I might make would probably result in him lamping me, so of course we just scuttle off the train.
And this was all at four in the afternoon. What happened to mealtimes for crying out loud?
When I become Queen, my first decree will be to shove the heads of anyone eating in public on spikes, and put one outside every Pret a Manger in Islington as a warning to others, although I would probably run out of heads before I ran out of Pret a Mangers.
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