I HAD a top time visiting my chums in Scotland … a pleasant house party last Friday night marred only by the spectacular projectile vomiting of a young female guest (she was unused to wine, or maybe just had a bad pie).
Apparently, in ancient Roman society, every banqueting hall had a nicely tiled en-suite vomitorium.
Not a bad idea when you’ve had to scrub sick out the shag pile for the umpteenth time.

We all had a wild time on Saturday night, too, with much saucy humour bandied about at a posh French restaurant in Edinburgh city centre. Surprisingly, we didn’t get chucked out.
I’m afraid I can’t go into any detail about the potty-mouthed dinner table banter … even in a blog as shabby as this one.
The rail journey to Scotland and back was hell, of course. The railways in the UK don’t really do progress.
I went up to Scotland on a Virgin train. The carriage, as usual, was far too hot, like a sauna, and the guards unable or unwilling to turn down the heat.
The guards seemed quite adept at fobbing passengers off with excuses, though. They’d probably been on a special training course for that.
A visit to the “On-Board Virgin Shop” did not make me feel any better. The queue was enormous, the food over-priced, and the staff clearly stressed.
Why do Virgin and all these other ridiculously branded train companies insist on re-naming things? As if that makes anything better.
For decades, British people called the refreshment service on trains the “buffet car” and the similar service in rail stations the “station buffet”. Why have the modern train companies changed all that?
And why are train staff these days required to dress in cast-off uniforms from the Ruritanian Secret Police?
Why can’t you open any of the windows on any of the modern trains? Why are the toilets designed for and evidently used and trashed by incontinent Daleks?
Why has Virgin, particularly, stopped referring to those travelling on its awful trains as “passengers”? Now, apparently, we are “customers”. Aye, very disgruntled customers.
I couldn’t get back all the way to New Brighton by train on the Sunday, at the end of my weekend break, even though I had been sold a ticket for the full return trip.
Firstly, I was told that much of the West coast mainline was out of action. There had been too much of the “wrong sort of rain” falling on the track or something.
Oh yeah, and I was warned of the risk of industrial action by militant workers from the Amalgamated Rail Services Employees (ARSE) union.
The station staff in Edinburgh explained that Virgin could, just about, get me back at least as far as Liverpool on Sunday night, so long as I didn’t mind spending nine hours dithering around Carlisle waiting for a replacement bus service.
I told ‘em I’d rather stick needles in my eyes. In the end the staff offered me an alternative. I could travel home instead down the east coast line via York, courtesy of GNER, then across to Liverpool in a cattle truck operated by yet another pretend train company called Backwards in Time (Strictly No Smoking) plc.
I agreed to do this even though I was subject to a £7.65 surcharge for the privilege of going miles out of my way.
I was not impressed on the GNER train that the buffet car had been re-branded a “GO EAT Café-Bar”. Café-bar my arse.
The Ruritanian on-board policemen also warned “customers” in the packed and stuffy carriages not to place any luggage on the seats – on pain of being forced to pay a penalty fare for this infringement.
All perfectly legal, apparently, under the terms of the Consolidated Rail Rip-Off (Duffel Bag Offences) Act 1986 passed by the Tories when they had gone completely bonkers.
Trouble is when I finally arrived in Liverpool there were no Merseytravel rail services out of the city for New Brighton. I’d been warned in advance about this.
Apparently there was, you’ve guessed it, a “replacement bus service” picking up for various points in the city centre.
Well, I looked for this bus service, carrying my bags through crowds of lairy drunken revellers (did you know that Liverpool has gained “European Capital of Binge-Drinking 2008” status?), but I could find no sign.
I even tried to get a bus to New Brighton but I was put off by an impertinent notice from Merseytravel stating that it would not tolerate violent attacks on its staff by thugs like me.
So I jumped a taxi back to Madford-on-Sea and to hell with the expense.
Actually, I don’t like travelling on Merseytravel’s Wirral Line anyway. The embankments along the track are filled with the most filthy junk, including soiled mattresses, old motorbikes, discarded knickers and empty tubs of Utterly Butterly.
Merseytravel likes to crow that it has a good punctuality record for its rail services, but that is only because its scheduled services are infrequent and specially arranged to go very slowly.
The reality of the modern rail industry, once you strip away the stream of PR rubbish it likes to generate about itself, is very grim.
One of the train drivers on the New Brighton run told me that on some stretches of the line the drivers never exceed 15 miles per hour. A bullet train it certainly isn’t.
I’ve done research on trains between New Brighton and Liverpool by studying the old timetables kept in the Central Library in Liverpool.
So here is a startling and shameful fact… Trains between Liverpool and New Brighton were more frequent and had quicker journey times 80 years ago than is the case today. Look it up yourselves if you don’t believe me.
If that is progress, then I am a lurrve-god worshipped by millions of women around the world.

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