Call that an impact? THIS is an impact

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It seems like they've been around for years... these fucking awful ads that stare at you from every bloody carriage of every bloody train on my route.

The bird - is it an emu? an ostrich? a rhea? Who cares - but what any school child will tell you is that this type of bird has a brain the size of a pingpong ball. Its natural programming includes a limited number of instructions along the line of PECK ... RUN ... POO ... SIT ON EGG but I'll be buggered if there's a subroutine that says MAKE A FUCKING IMPACT. I'm sure Darwin would agree. As for a fish with a brain the size of a pinhead...

Several years ago, and on the same train route, I was slouching in my seat on the Vomit Comet (the last train home on a Friday night), listening to the usual racket of drunken City Boys and smelling the stench of McDonald's and KFCs when two tramps boarded.

One was male, the other female. Both had that red-faced, dirty, rugged skinned look typical of those for who had lived for decades on the streets. They both carried half-full plastic pint glasses and both were extremely drunk.

They were treated with wary glances, except for the City yobs, half a carriage down, who were happily laughing at the leery duo.

The two tramps leaned against the toilet doors, about four feet away from me.

That curiously British habit of pretending that nothing unusual is happening has been well captured by recent series of Dr Who which has shown the natives behaving normally even amidst a violent alien invasion. Such a thing happened here, even when the tramps started singing a tuneless, wordless ballad that only they were familiar with, while the movement of the train caused the cheap beer to slosh over nearby passengers.

Who's gonna bolt first, I wondered. We all obeyed the golden rule: Avoid Eye Contact.

And then Mrs Tramp collapsed into the seat opposite me and ran her hands through my hair.

"FUCK OFF!" I yelled and yes, dear reader, I was the first one to scarper, finding refuge behind the City yobs. Even so, I had a superb view as, spurned, Mrs Tramp stood up and, eyeing the people sitting around her (I think she was so pissed that she hadn't realised I had made myself scarce), shouted something like "Wyyyyyyyuuuuuuuurrr woddddda fuckinell yoooooo orlllll lookin at yer fucknfuckfuck wuuuuurrrr!!!"

And then, while Mr Tramp looked on laughing, Mrs Tramp squatted down in the middle of the carriage, tugged her filthy knickers down to her knees and released a chocolate hostage.

She knew how to make an impact.