Draggers
Those who are familiar with my weekly travels will know all too well of my frequent tirades on the subject of moving around in this country.
For those unfamiliar I’ll summarise; it sucks.
My voyage between home and work is 130 of her Majesty’s finest miles from the bowels of Surrey to the simplistic coastal life of Suffolk, and the reverse, each and every sacred mile of which is crammed full of assholes making a journey purely to get in my way.
Not that said assholes are doing it on purpose, moreover there are too many people trying to get from A to B at the same time using roads which are only capable of handling half that number. Just.
This is, naturally, assuming I am driving my Ghia which I tend not to do when the weather is British as it’s like piloting a goldfish bowl through a sewer (or Kent, as some like to call it). The average journey length when driving is around 3 hours, all time fastest 1 hour 40 mins (before I blew that car up) all time longest 9 hours and stopped counting.
The combinational effect of the M25 and the A12 is a lesson in extreme patience. Providing you have Marlboro, minty gum (the use of which allows you to smoke more Marlboro without your mouth starting to feel like week-old socks), a bottle of Coke, sunshine, and plenty of “tunes” the experience isn’t awful, but it’s not to be recommended.
Given the roulette style nature of the roads, and the inevitable risk of driving a 40 year old car and having to call the bastard AA yet again when the fucker (and I use the term in the fondest possible sense) breaks down… again, I am occasionally prone to using her Majesty’s finest railways to carriage me from employment to family.
Without dwelling too heavily on One railway’s incredible lack of reliability, or completely evil pricing system, or totally ludicrous lack of service at peak on a Friday, I’ll simply say that this means that predicting your time of arrival when setting off is foolhardy.
My issue, for this particular vexation is neither with the roads in the country, nor the assholes using them, nor the vaguery of the rail networks, or the asshole train companies who run them, or the demand for everyone to work within the boundary of the M25 if they want to make a decent living or any of the arse involved in this commute.
No, my issue is very simple, and best illustrated through the medium of image.
This, friends, is a suitcase, with wheels and a handle. It is used to transport items of ephemera by its owner from point A to point B, allowing the owner to use less effort in its transit by deploying the handle and deftly towing, rather than carrying, it.
In principle it sounds marvellous, but the truth of its use is a different picture. Effectively what this presents is the ability for the owner of said suitcase to use up 3 times the length of space they would usually require, and, unlike those who subscribe to backpack usage who, for now are not on my list, give no hints of what its owner is up to. A backpack pivots as its owner does, a wheeled suitcase does not.
I may be getting ahead of myself here, so I shall back up a little.
On the occasions where the wife and myself are due to go somewhere for sufficient time to warrant a suitcase we have the same conversation.
Me : “BUT WE’RE ONLY GOING FOR 2 FUCKING NIGHTS”
Her : “…”
Me : “YOU DON’T NEED FOUR PAIRS OF FUCKING SHOES”
Her : “…”
Me : “FINE. TAKE AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE, BUT YOU’RE CARRYING IT.”
She is better at this game than me. Her response is not to pack a sensible amount of clothing, take less shoes or use a smaller bag. No. It is to use a larger bag and incorporate my items with her own thus ensuring that I will be carrying the bag.
She is the reason the wheeled fucking suitcase was invented. To get around the “if you can’t carry it, you packed too much shit” rule. This rule, which was never invented but a fact of existence, primarily affecting women. I generalise heavily here, however the primary culprits in this case (sic) are female. I believe this may stem from never having carried their own bags in the past and working out during the Suffragette and women’s liberation movements that actually, even with equal rights as their male counterparts they still wanted to pack more crap than they could carry, and bestow that privilege on someone else they were travelling with.
That’s probably a fact.
So, you’ve packed more than you can carry (ie too much) and drag your suitcase behind you without checking to see whether you’re getting in someone’s way – hint : you are. You’ve got people tripping over your bag and then give them the evil eye. You’re yacking on your goddamn phone, dragging your bag (filled with shit you don’t need), getting in my way, everyone else’s way, tripping people over, and that’s only the beginning.
Draggers do not operate alone.
They move in packs. Often two or three will school together before find a larger herd to migrate with. This makes foot travel a nightmare for those with the decency to A: pack the right amount of shit, and B: Carry. It. Suffice to say that railway stations, airports, and every other “traveller” hotspot are filled to bursting with migrating herds of dragger scum.
It gets worse.
Draggers are not only inconsiderate but also stupid.
Scenario – a train carriage 2 inches narrower than a dragger’s case.
I don’t need to go on do it? You’ve seen it too. But, you know me well enough to know that I’m going to continue.
Just because the route a dragger is attempting to travel is too narrow for the dragged object, does it mean they WILL PICK THE FUCKING CASE UP USING THE GENEROUSLY PROVIDED, USUALLY MULTIPLE, HANDLE OPTIONS? NO. OF COURSE NOT. INSTEAD THEY WILL FORCIBLY DRAG THE BASTARD THROUGH THE NARROW ROUTE SQUEEZING IT THROUGH GETTING IN THE FUCKING WAY MORE THAN USUAL AND BITCHING ABOUT IT THE ENTIRE TIME.
Here’s how it works.
If you can’t carry it, you can’t take it. The end.
There you have it, a group of mindless, obnoxious scum who have made the list. En masse.
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