Geordie Adventure Part 1

Question: Who is the worst person to spend two and a half hours sitting next to on a train?
Answer: The man I spent two and a half hours sitting next to on a train.

I arrived at my packed train with my ticket in my hand, walking down the aisle towards my reserved seat. G36, G37, G38 (I wonder what that disgusting slobbery noise is) G39, G40 (and that rank smell) G41, GForty...oh. THAT's the source of both the sounds and the smell. My neighbour for the next 2.5 hours was noisily eating a KFC. When I say noisily, I don't just mean a couple of slurps here and there. I mean, imagine the sound of a big dog with a cold lapping up custard. Now you're close.

When he had finished his 'meal', he got out his reading material for the journey - that winner of many a journalistic award, The Daily Star. The 'headlines' were an exclusive interview with someone from Hollyoaks who had forgotten to get dressed, and something to do with Gazza. I felt like I was falling in love with him.

Then he made a little noise. It was a noise like, how can I describe it, like someone who has just noisily eaten a KFC has got a bit of chicken stuck somewhere near the back of thier grease-coated mouths, and they wish to extract it in order to masticate it once more. A sort of wet, sucking sound. Quite short and sharp, but nevertheless able to sound indescribably repulsive even in such a short space of time. The kind of little sound that makes me physically wince. Why am I describing this sound in such detail? Because my neighbour made the sound CONTINUOUSLY for two and a half hours at about 7 second intervals. There was something about the pitch and frequency of that sound, that even having Ruby on at FULL volume (to the extent that people turned round to see where the sound was coming from) I could STILL HEAR HIM! I am not exaggerating when I say that it made me want to cry.

All the while he was doing this, he also repeatedly pulled at the material by his lifted armpit (only the one facing me) as if wishing to air it, but in fact succeeding in wafting his stink my way, and punctuating his other bodily noises with a motif of intermittent belching, just in case I had forgotten EXACTLY what the KFC had smelled like.

Just when I thought I would faint with the effort of not smashing his face against the train window, he did something which really surpassed himself. He ripped up his train ticket into little bits and....I almost can't believe this...used it as an improvised tooth pick, before discarding the pieces at OUR feet.

Honestly, I don't make this stuff up. Did I mention the journey was two and a half hours?