Today I woke up in a good mood. I was very tired straight away but I have started Christmas holidays and also saw King Kong last night. I'm a fan of big monkeys that I know can't hurt me and also of dinosaurs. King Kong reminded me of Arnee, my old dog. They were both evil at first but more tolerant when they knew you and they had the same colour hair. They are also now both dead. Watching that film will make me more understanding of animals for a short while. I washed and cleaned my teeth, finished packing my bag then left to catch the train as I was travelling back to the Isle of Man with Joe.
I scored my second recent victory over British rail. Earlier in the week I got a cheap ticket to Derby even though my rail card was four days out of date. Net saving, 90p. Chalk it up (though I didn't capitalise on this as I gave about that much to a charity collector the following day). This time, I renewed my rail card and was told it would only be valid til my birthday in May. They forgot about this and gave me a full year. Chalk it up.
On the train, there was a Chinese man who was trying not to fall asleep. We laughed at his swinging head for a while and other people noticed us and joined in. Then I played Tetris but my form has dipped recently and my best score was only 108 lines. Joe was boasting about being the puzzle word champion having never failed in completing the whole thing. In case you are unfamiliar, this is the code game where there is a grid of numbers that all correspond to a letter and you have to guess which one matches with which from a couple of clues in order to get all the words.
Joe struggled with the one we found in a copy of the Sun though, and tried to get away with 'cbap' and 'buip' as proper words. I have never checked his workings before but his previous 100% success record is more than likely down to him normally allowing words that he just thinks up. The train trolley man spoke like a robot and told me off for having my feet on the seat.
There was also a couple of student philosphers sat behind us. They were talking about all the problems that trouble society and how they could be fixed. The welfare state, war in Iraq, the cultural divide between the younger and older generations, they covered every thing. I hate people like that and hated listening to them. When one of them left the train, his place was taken by somebody else who got on at Stockport. The girl tried to initiate exactly the same conversation, starting with the identical line of "Yep, it's a wedding magazine. Going to a friends hen night." Her new seating partner didn't want to know and made it obvious so she travelled in silence for the next half hour while Joe and I sat there looking smug.
Joe also sniggered a lot and kept trying to get me to drink my bottle of Coke (500mls). While I had been distracted, he'd swapped the lid and labels with his diet coke. Crucially though, the red ring around the top had not been switched. I spotted this straight away and foiled his practical joke but he's still been boasting about it to everybody he has encountered since.
We stopped off at Manchester Piccadilly Station. I had a steak pasty and a chicken sandwich from Greggs because I was hungry. I was also dying for the toilet so had to pay 20p to use the ones on the platform. It was very well maintained so I ended up being slightly less irritated than I initially was. Current score: Me 2 - British Rail 1. Also, there were no bins to put rubbish in because of bombs so I ended up carrying my Greggs paper bag around with me for ages before stuffing it down the back of a seat on the train. I justified this by there still being no bins and also that if a mouse got trapped in it and suffocated then it would be okay as the mouse shouldn't be on the train anyway. My main concern with littering is mice. This stems back to a promotional video i watched in primary school where one got stuck in a bottle and starved to death whilst his friend strangled himself on one of those plastic beer can connectors.
At the airport they told me Joe was booked on the flight and I wasn't. This was despite the fact we both had booking references. They tried to stop me getting on it so I had to ring someone in the office at the Isle of Man. They told me it was my fault so I briefly turned into my Dad and started saying things like "It's YOUR fault and YOU are going to fix it!". To be honest, I was pretty horrid to the poor woman on the other end. I half expected her to be the one in the right too, because it was my Mum who booked the flight and occasionallly her effiecieny wanders a little. I even threw my booking papers on the floor for effect, but it was wasted seeing as the person I was arguing with was on the other end of the phone. Maybe she heard the papers fluttering or Joe laughing.
They let me on the plane (which had to be delayed for us) and we sat behind an old woman who accidently got the air hostess to beat Joe with her crutches. I slept for most of the flight. So did Joe, but only after telling the air hostess to watch what she was bloody doing. Her english was appalling and when she gave the safety instructions she sounded like a swarm of bees. If I analyse the day objectively, I'd say the lack of sleep from the previous night may have made me act a little more unpleasantly than usual.
We got to the Isle of Man and Mum met us there. We sorted the ticket problem - it was apparently a computer error at their end. It did cross my mind to ring the woman back up but I reminded myself that that's exactly what my Dad would want to do, so didn't. I wasn't going to be celebrating Christmas alone at Manchester airport and that was good enough.
At home we had a really nice roast dinner and I have done some good sleeping and designed my own car for if I was rich or a superhero. It has a crow's nest and circular saw on the front. I also got a copy of the same puzzle word Joe cocked up on the train just to show him how it's done. His mistake was missing out the words "shazm" and "ixeb"