A Return, Please

THE new Semi-Super Saver Single Return Railroader Autumn Summer Traveller Student Nurse District Pet Family Oxbow Lake Pass is actually straightforward, according to train bosses.

Gibbous

Senior executives at Best Central Trains have defended the controversial new ticket despite customers' growing frustration at the needless and deliberate complexity of rail travel in the UK.

Best Central Trains director Tom Logan said: "We're really excited about the discounted SSSSRRASRSNDPFOL Pass which offers great value to customers while also being much less confusing than its predecessor, the Standard Single.

"The process of buying one couldn't be simpler. You just book it online, not more than three days before your journey and not less than nine days after, and at a time in the lunar cycle when the moon may be described as 'gibbous'.

"Although you cannot print your ticket at home, you will be issued with a simple 47-digit code, written for security reasons in the ancient language of the Sumerians, which you then take to your nearest station. For ecological reasons we insist that this is done by horseback.

"At the station, you simply repeat the code verbally with all the correct intonation to a friendly moustachioed robot named 'Monsieur Le Pouton'.

"On acceptance of your code, M. Le Pouton's moustaches will twirl and several dozen tickets and receipts will issue from his mouth, flying all over the platform.

"You'll need to pick them all up and take every single one to your nearest owl, then punch them three times with its beak. Any owl will do, most of them are fine with this type of process.

"Then you are almost ready to travel, presuming you have brought blood and stool samples along to help us verify your biological identity, without which our inspectors may be forced to waterboard you using a big polystyrene bucket of scalding hot coffee before hurling your spent body from the moving train, into a ditch full of fag butts and toads.

"The only restrictions on this ticket are that it cannot be used at times when, if you wrote them down in a twenty-four hour clock format, added all the digits together and divided them by three and a half, you got a prime number, or if you are pregnant or have curly or wavy hair or are related, however distantly, to someone called Julian."

He added: “Naturally we reserve the right to change any of this on a whim."

Commuter Nikki Hollis said last night: "Fuck everyone who had anything to do with this."

DMash.