Friday, September 09, 2005

Bus Report #94

Actually, a British Rail report about 'the chavs'. The Teacher's Pet reminded me about this story from our trip... Read on...
So, we went to Durham, England for the day on Thursday, taking the train from Edinburgh to Durham.
The train was hot, stinky and made a ton of stops. It was not long before The Teacher's Pet was not feeling well. Meanwhile, Our Intrepid Friend In London sat in a window seat, playing with his mobile phone.
At Berwick-On-Tweed, several passengers came into our car, and as luck would have it they sat right in front of us.
These passengers, henceforth known as 'the chavs' (Our Intrepid Friend In London says this is the term for what these people are. I have a feeling it is the British equivalent of white trash, or something similar) were a man, a woman and a teenage girl.
The man was covered in bad tattoos. The woman looked completely worn out and the teenage girl looked like most teenage girls: hair pulled back tightly into a bun, too much jewelry, unflattering too-tight jeans and a soiled white sweatshirt.
Two things were immediately apparent: The girl was not related to the couple, and none of them were too bright when it came to using the woman's mobile phone.
The phone kept cutting out, and each time it happened they had the same conversation:
Man: I can't hear ye, are ye there?
Girl: It's dropped, because of the train. The signals interrupted.
Woman: Call again.
Man, to girl: How can ye know that?
And on, and on, and on.
The Teacher's Pet needed air and was sick of listening to the chavs, so she left the car.
As we traveled closer to Durham, the truth emerged slowly. I won't keep you in suspense: The man was a friend of the girl's dad, who was in Durham Prison. He had "promised the lassie" he'd take her to see her dad. The woman was his wife and they had several sons who were at least a decade older than the girl, yet they kept teasing her that she was in love with the son named Clive. She snapped her gum and bragged about her nice set of tits (nothing special so far as I could see from my seat). She bragged about getting arrested for shoplifting. She whined about the man's teasing.
The girl and the woman left for the cafe car. The man made another call, this time telling someone to "take care of things for me, you know what I mean" and saying some other cryptic stuff which made this eavesdropper think: This guy is arranging a hit. He probably was. They were disgusting.
They got off the train at the same stop we did. As The Teacher's Pet and Our Intrepid Friend In London and I walked into town, I laid out the whole story for them.

On our return train hours later, I saw the chavs in back of us in the queue. I told The Teacher's Pet that I would not sit in their car under any circumstances. Luckily, they got into a different car.
The chavs, everyone. The chavs.

2 Comments:

Blogger Grrg said...

This really happened, everyone. She was so Vicky Pollard it wasn't even funny. Except more "Northern."

4:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I assume you mean the teenage chav, not our Rach.

6:28 PM  

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