My seat is so uncomfortable I think it could possibly be used as an effective deterrent against crime. Fill all the prisons with ex-National Express coaches and make serious offenders sit in them for hours on end while scenery worthy of a cheap hotel painting goes rushing by in a world that is cooler where the "air conditioning" cannot reach you. This is not air conditioning, it's a series of hair dryers glued in to the ceiling and set to medium. We will be sweating but styled by the time we reach London.
The chair seems to be made of some kind of sticky substance, spread across some wooden beams and what feels like a very upset animal. Something leggy and spiky. It's been forged in the 80 degree angle so that my face is pointed ever so slightly towards my thighs. The seat belt that I'm legally required to wear is chewing away nicely into my neck causing lesions that I'm sure will fester nicely in the sauna style atmosphere of the coach.
I've decided to kill the man next to me, because he is reading this blog as I type it and even though he seems to have just this second decided to dig his book out of his bag, I am still going to kill him because he spent the first 30 minutes of the journey telling me I should tell him a joke. Of course that's largely my fault for telling him I'm a comedian - rookie error. But he really should have taken no for an answer.
Him: Tell me a joke.
Me: No.
Him: Go on, you've got to.
Me: No, I haven't. It's not really what I do.
Him: You don't do one liners?
Me: Rarely on stage, never on coaches.
Him: What kind of thing do you do?
Me: I tell rambling anecdotes about bird documentaries I've watched recently.
Him: Do you talk about periods?
Me: Oh for fuck's sake.
Him: I really like that Scottish guy off Mock The Week.
Me: Of course you do.
Him: What's his name?
Me: Frankie Boyle.
Him: That's it! What do you think of him?
Me: *radio silence*
Him: Not a fan?
Me: Not really - not my kind of comedy.
Him: What is your kind of comedy? Tell me a joke...
Me: Ah shit, my laptop slipped and now it's in your head. Oh god you're bleeding all over the seat and the heat from the "air conditioning" is baking it on to the pleather. Oh dear, well, you might not think it's particularly funny now but then it took years for people to get Stewart Lee. Frankie Boyle would never do something like this I suppose but he would joke about it happening to someone less fortunate than him so I suppose that's the same thing?
Him: *Dead from blood loss*
I hate this coach. I hate everything about it from the woman who keeps slamming back into the seat in front of me, to the happy Welsh people who are enjoying their lives. Since my great toboggan accident of 2010 there are very few positions I can stay in for more than 2 minutes without crippling pain through my back. Thankfully doggy style is one of them. AM I RIGHT? LADS? There's a fucking one liner for you, you miserable cretin. Does that please you? Stop pretending to read your book and laugh at my you-induced hilarity. Look what I've done... I've told a joke! A sexy, sexy joke. I'm sweating at the same time, I'm practically Lee Evans and Lee Mack rolled into one. Call me Lee MacEvans because I am brilliant and just like all the comics you see on the television.
I hate this coach. I hate the way the wheels are made of granite and have an inbuilt pot hole seeking system that is churning my mediocre hotel breakfast into a paste of potential salmonella and motion sickness. Bouncing along the M4 in a misery seeking missile bound for a city that's pouring with rain and full of people who have that Friday feeling. I don't have that Friday feeling, that Friday feeling is just a feeling that tells you you actually hate 5/7ths of your life. You are so miserable for most of your days that you've invented a term for the tiny bubble of joy you feel when you realise today is the day you can get drunk and waste your 2 days of freedom in a haze of regret and panic about Monday.
I hate this coach. I hate the way it's sucking all the natural optimism out of my mind and replacing it with thoughts of doom and of repeatedly flicking the corpse next to me until it comes back to life so I can kill it again.
Far from divine.
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