2007-12-31 - 6:41 a.m.

Something sinister is afoot at Dundee train station. You steel yourself to descend into that tomb of squandered moments when suddenly a command smashes into your brainbox and thought rapes you on the stairwell. It takes you back at first because you can’t believe this shit is happening. How could something so vulgar and so unutterably banal have been green-lit, have been okayed, in this supposedly enlightened age? What fat controller gave this cockamamie turd of an idea the rubber cock of approval? A looped synthetic voice intones something threatening like, ‘Always use the handrail when using the stairs.’ It just keeps repeating, repeating. At all times. When Iraqi hostages had Barney the Dinosaur blasted at them it was called torture. This, however, is probably called something queer like a 'customer safety initiative'. Brave new world indeed! Staggered as I was, my fists remained balled resolutely within my pockets. I was having cunt all to do with this humbug. I strode down those bescumbered stairs without any assistance from the handrail, the uninvited words bouncing off me like tossed pink panties. I could have been executed on the spot for such a brazen display of non-conformity in the current climate change. They could have gotten medieval on my ass.

This is The Man taking revenge. The harbinger of this nonsense, which should have sounded warning bells, were those automated ticket barriers that have rendered the thrilling art of fair dodging all but nostalgia. We’ve all got blood on our hands, people. They finally cottoned on that it was a profit deal, and ensuring that passengers paid the fair was in fact good for business. But it still smarted. It still rankled. It brewed away in the revenge pits of their guts. So what they did, evidently, was try to create some sort of utopian society within the confines of Dundee train station. Just imagine, if you dare, the orderly processions of handrail using ‘happy’ customers! The step-lively wives! Does not that dreadful pun strike an icy jilt of terror into your very marrow? If my theory is correct, the next step will be that grim little enclave of a station bar: ‘Always use the coaster when drinking your Guiness’. I know it sounds a bit screwy, a bit Da Vinci Code, but when these diary entries suddenly stop, you’ll know I’m right. They’ll have gotten to me. My goose will have been cooked, my cookie crumbled, my cheese left out in the wind. I’ll sing like a canary and turn every last one of you handrail snook-cockers in, so help me Yahweh. So help me, Handrail.

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