Welcome to England...

It's telling, I suppose, that after 12 hours of travel involving aeroplanes, taxis, ferries and the like, the first part of my journey home from holiday to go wrong was...London Underground. After all the things that could possibly go wrong on my trip, inevitably it was that showcase and pride of swinging London town which was the thing which let me down as I found myself standing outside the closed station at Heathrow at 10pm on Saturday night being told that the piccadilly Line was suspended.
"Suspended?", quoth I. "Why?"
"Leaves on the line, guv'nor."
"Leaves on the line? Leaves on the line?. You're an underground railway! How do leaves get into the tunnels? Underground trees?
"Nah. It's Bonsai trees. The drivers grow them in the cabs. It helps alleviate the stresses of the job, but they're a devil for fallin' foliage."
"Now you listen here, my man. Anyone who considers thirty-three grand and twelve weeks holiday a year a stressful job isn't working! Oh, the halcyon delicacies of life working in the public sector! The ease and leisure that having a job for life guarantee! Swanning about in your comfy trains, living the high life at the passengers expense, going on strike when the football is on. What a happy, carefree existence!"
"..."
"Oh, fair enough. How on earth am I supposed to get home, then?"
"Well, guv, if you go down the passage, up the stairs, under the overpass, past the puddle of fresh vomit, step over the dead dog, round the back of the news-stand, cross the bridge, down the ramp, through the concourse, run from the drunken aggressive beggars through the ill-lit car-park basement, over the dual carriageway and stand next to the vandalised bus-stop, there might be a bus along in an hour or two."

Now, consdering that the famously inefficient Greeks can get me from Piraeus to the airport with a minimum of fuss and hassle, is it asking too much that the travel organisation servicing the busiest airport in the world could have someone a) helpful, b) capable of speaking comprehensible English (and possibly some other languages, considering the number of lost-looking foreign tourists milling about**) and above all c) not obviously descended from a lost tribe of drooling, inbred Neanderthals manning the station? Is it? Well, plainly that is too much to ask, yes.
And so, as a note to London Underground: For what I pay you every year to even enter your malodourous, squalid little hole, you worthless, pointless, loathsome little Donkeypunchers*, you should be laying on a courtesy car for me at the very least. Twats.

In other news, apart from London Underground I had a delightful holiday. Complete with sun, more booze than was good for me, the biggest and most powerful electrical storm I've ever seen, sea, octopi, ice-cream, a nice hotel and, best of all, I got to spend International Talk Like A Pirate Day bombing around the crystal-blue Aegean in a motorboat whilst plundering booty and forcing landlubbers to walk the plank. Arrr.


^{*ukmonty excepted.
**There's a serious point to be made here. There were a lot of people, plainly newly arrived to the country and not speaking the lingo, left dumped with no help by the Underground staff. Considering that the Underground spends more time broken than working, I have to wonder why no contingency for this has been made. If this is how we greet people new to the country, it's a wonder they want to come here at all.}