Gronda Gronda Y'all

Whatever, can't have a conversation with someone who's deliberately ignorant.

I'm actually bemused by Brits etc. going to America and discovering Ranch Dressing.

Because I live here in the Amazeballs Britain, and that stuff is on the supermarket shelves.

Come listen to my tale, dearly beloved, a tale of public transport.

Not too long ago, in a land very close to me, there was a Railway company who'd won the right to run trains in the North of England.

And for a while everything was… If not actually creamy, then mostly OK.

But then a great and powerful Wizard cast the spell: Fire anyone senior enough to know what the fuck is up.

And suddenly the time-table was re-worked to put all the trains in service for shoppers, but almost none at the feet of the staff who actually opened and ran the stores and large financial institutions that did something or other with money that made the city rich enough to have all kinds of neato shops.

And after a while with much angst and screeching and people complaining of missed trains, Northern Rail decided to do something about it all.

Instead of admitting they cancelled a train they were responsible for selling expensive tickets for, they reassigned a train that was scheduled, to be the next scheduled train. And thus technically, no trains were cancelled. Merely delayed so much that they vanished. This sucked if you actually needed to be places on time.

They raised the prices.

They ran less trains because they found out there's no upper limit to the number of passengers on a train. The part where more than a few passengers passed out, but were unable to be removed from the train or seen by staff with First Aid training due to the overcrowding, was considered incidental to the people who were making money.

Maintianance was reduced to practically none. Who cares if the seats are damaged beyond use?

Things got so bad that the official Northern Rail app for finding your train was deemed useless, as it didn't reflect where and when the trains would actually show up. Some brave soul who's name is lost to time (Nicholas Mitchell) created a more accurate train tracker called Northern Fail - Which obviously honked the bippies of Northern Rail who absolutely refused to fix their own app or stick to their own timetable, so what can I say?

Northern Rail also had the bright idea to strap stress monitors to their customers. Which is like saying "Dress some swimmers up like tuna and give them blood flavoured sunscreen, and we'll get some data on shark attacks". Which is where I came in: Having a nice easy, relaxing day except when having to get on a train. Or I'd like to have gotten on a train, but since they often showed up on the wrong platform at the wrong time, or not at all, this became a bit of a spike in the ol' cortisol.

On a particularly bad day, my 45 minute commute (Which realistically should have been me reading a book or taking a nap), would somehow stretch out to several hours: And if the morning and afternoon were bad (As they frequently were), I'd have a 4+ hour commute for an 8 hour working day.

And then one day, on an overcrowded train that was so hot, I'd started bringing a battery powered fan along, I was moved to say something very sarcastic about the service.

At which point a BBC reporter was summoned from the ether, leaned over my shoulder and asked if I'd repeat that while he recorded.

So I did.

And when I got to work, I had to apologise for being late due to the trains, and was thusly informed that showing up on the BBC World-Wide News delivering a soundbite about the situation to the english speaking world, was going to be considered the new office gold standard for justified lateness.

And that was my small, minuscule contribution to the re-nationalisation of Northern Rail, which was the first step in slowly reeling in all the other terrible train and bus companies.

Because while it may not feel like much, combined, these sorts of things are like an avalanche.

And yes, the service has improved.

There I was, at about two kilometres, pretending to be a Xenoptera, so the locals wouldn't shoot at me.

The survey ship had dropped out of whatever we're calling FTL this week, dropped my pod and gone off to do it's thing.

Me? I was all snugly bundled up, watching my shows and taking long naps until I hit atmosphere. Then things got briefly interesting because it was purely ballistic (and call me a jumped-up ape), but I hate it when the status is basically "Hi, we are very on fire, please remain calm".

Skimmed a mountain range – Very pretty – and then the back opened up and I got sucked out with a cheery 'Buh Bai!' from the drop pod.

Drogue stabilised my attitude, wings deployed, and I spent way too long vaguely heading down for unauthorised lithobraking, before I got a thermal and started to climb.

Then everything was peachy keen: ha ha, nothing to see here, just a big ass xenoptera, see? Wings, downward-facing camera, transmitter spike, totally normal. Definitely not an Alien UFO glider painted up as a sky dragon.

I have the weirdest craving for pretzels.

Anyway, it was all cool until the real Xenoptera showed up.

Xenoptera, you understand, just means 'Alien with Wings'. This particular bunch is now classified as magniamicus alatiterribiles xeni.

"Oh shit!' I thought, but what I said into the mission recorder was "Oh, shit!".

Because I'm classy.

These things are huge, and they have flesh-rending claws and talons and… imagine a giant fanged pelican with eagle feet and velociraptor claws sticking out of the joint of their wing.

And a couple had just cruised up and were examining me. I didn't know if they hunted other xenoptera, but it was a little bit tense.

After a while, they continued to not eat my face, but they were sort of chirping at me.

The first one made a sequence of chirps, and the others would pick it up. Then another would do a different sequence… And they kept staring at me. Big brown eyes. Like a cow. A flying carnivorous cow that snacks on light aircraft.

Obscurely, I thought about whales.

I tried broadcasting the uh… the… OK you know when someone uses an instrument to hit the pitch of spoken language? I tried that. I just said my name. Like really simple. Bah-BAH-bwee.

And they all chirped it back, and the next thing I knew, they were all tucked into a cosy V behind me.

They must have spotted me hopping from one thermal to another and figured I knew something they didn't.

So I spent the rest of the mission hopping from rising air column to rising air column, with a couple of excursions to terrorise the local wildlife. They came back up to follow after they were done feeding.

After a while, they even stopped trying to feed me strips of… I dunno. Xeno-Antelope? I only deal with stuff that's flying around.

And yeah, I did some nice overflights of the settlements the locals were using – They're up to RADAR and aircraft, hence pretending to be a xenoptera, though having my own flock certainly helped.

I was kind of sad to say goodbye to "my" flock, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't fit in the drop pod, and also, we don't breathe the same atmosphere.

I don't know how smart they are - They definitely chatter a lot. Maybe there's a story about a strange xenoptera that showed up, always knew where to fly and find food, then suddenly landed, crawled back into an egg and flew away without wings.

I'd like that, I think.

I recorded everything, and I was starting to get a handle on the vibe of their chatter before I left.

I even learned a few magniamicus alatiterribiles xeni calls: They make a flock by calling their name, and if you repeat their names back, then add yours, you're in.

Just a bunch of wingy bois. All part of the flock. Me and my flying homies. Naganwa and the gang.

There's one call for "I see edible animals" and one for "Ahrg fuck, that's scary, run away", which is synonymous with the local aircraft, and also "Hey! HEY! eat somethin' we're worried!".