JUMPER

What a shite day

Travelled up to London last night, to be in place for work today. The job got cancelled just before I set off to do it. Bollocks.
So I decided to fuck off out of London early on the Friday, but realised my Network Railcard had expired. So I missed the 16.20 out of Waterloo while queueing to renew it. But never mind, I got on he 16:50.

Ten minutes down the line we're passing through a Station and BANG!. A loud thud and a jolt. I'm in the first carriage, near the front of the train, and everybody looks puzzled. A brick thrown from a bridge? Something on the line the train ran over?

The train slows down after the station and comes to a halt. Across the way, a passenger says "someone just got hit" Oh fuck. "I just saw the body scooting along the platform beside the train."

Now the person obviously had some serious issues. You don't just leap in front of thousands of tons of metal moving at 70mph unless you are seriously fucked up. But what about the poor bastard driving the train? Right in his face. He must have been looking - you don't drive a train through a station at speed without paying attention. Poor bastard. That image will be etched on his memory for the rest of his life.

I hear that train drivers who are confronted with this, often find they can't go back to work for fear of it happening again. I can understand that. Every time they go through a station they are not stopping at, it must all come flashing back to them. I would not want the image of a squashed face at my window to haunt me for the rest of my days.

My heart goes out to the family of this troubled soul, but you know, there are less traumatic ways of topping yourself. Car exhaust and hosepipe. Lots of booze and a load of pills. Swallow dive off the Severn Bridge. Apart from the train driver, there must have been plenty of people who saw the body twizzling down the platform like some discarded kids ragdoll.

Apparently, lobbing your ass in front of an express train on a platform is more likely to result in an insurance payout for the family you leave behind than other forms of self destruction, as there is more possibility of it being an accident and therefore harder to prove suicide.

So we switched trains after limping on to the next station, standing room only all the way to Woking, and then change again and stand for another two hours in a packed Friday evening train.

By the time I got home, my tea was dried up.

The selfish bastard.

Bill Turnip.