95 reasons to never use Megabus

August 25th: Preston North End v Leicester City (Carling Cup second round)

I'm woken at 4.15am by the symptoms of what I suspect is a chest infection. This means I'm up four hours earlier than planned, which is a pain in the arse. It appears that I'll need to pack some more things for my trip, the most important being tissues and paracetamol. I have a quick scour of the internet to see if there's any important information I may have missed, but it appears there's nothing new to learn. After a small dose of daytime television (which is, no matter what channel or time of day you watch, unspeakably awful) I leave the house at 10.30. On the trip to the bus station, I make friends with Kim, who just happens to be sitting next to me. A friendly conversation lasts us right into the city centre, and takes my mind off the fact that there are about fifteen more people on this bus than there should be.

I arrive at the station with some minutes to spare and find myself a seat on the Derby coach. Before we leave, we're told that it stops at Loughborough and, for reasons unknown, Kegworth. We never find out these reasons because it turns out it was a lie - it certainly goes through Kegworth but doesn't come close to stopping once. Good. The only interesting thing that has ever happened anywhere near Kegworth was a plane crash, and that was 20 years ago. And it wasn't even really in Kegworth.

I arrive in Derby shortly after 12, have a little wander, am approached by a market researcher ("Do you drink lager at least once a week?" "No, not ever.") and buy some new shoes before finding my way to Derwent Street to catch the 12.50 Transpeak bus which will take me all the way to Manchester. This is, in theory, a 2 hour 55 minute journey. Let's see shall we.

I observe the view out of the window for the first hour of the trip, and this being Derbyshire it's pretty good-looking. The bus passes through Matlock Bath, which appears busier than Derby city centre, then into Matlock. Shortly afterwards, a woman of about 167 gets on the bus, taking a painfully long time to do so. She is then followed by what I assume is her mother, who takes even longer. A woman at the back gets off and I relocate from my original seat. I'm amazed by how much more leg room there is. Shortly after moving, I discover that the man sitting directly in front of me is going to spend the entire journey sneezing. Nice. Two stops later, then, I shuffle over to the other side. A couple of walkers get on and sit a few seats ahead. One of them has a package all wrapped up to keep it safe. On it there is some tape which appears to say 'LE FRAGILE'. Worst French ever.

After another hour or so of the bus working its way through winding Peak District roads under a hot sun, we suddenly hit heavy rain. The girl sitting in front of me jumps as she gets hit by cold rainwater coming in through the window. Over the next few moments, I witness a window-closing frenzy as every window on the bus is slammed shut by the person nearest to it. No sooner is the exercise complete than the rain disappears and we're in sunny weather again.

At this point, I receive an odd text message, from someone who appears to know me but apparently thinks my name is Tony. It isn't.

As the bus approaches High Peak, the rain appears again, as quickly as it did last time. Then as we leave Buxton, sunshine. The bus reaches Disley (Cheshire - my third county of the day) and suddenly we're in a traffic jam which, owing to a small area of roadworks, stretches all the way to Stockport. As a result, the bus doesn't arrive in Manchester until 4.25. No problem though, this still leaves me 35 minutes to find Shudehill Interchange for the 5pm bus to Preston (operated by Megabus no less - booked online for three quid). I arrive at the interchange just before 4.45 and find the one stand from which all coaches depart. Bet that's not confusing.

5pm arrives, and there's no bus. At 5.15, I spot an A4 printed notice telling me that the M11 northwards is running about half an hour late, because of a 'breakdown'. No problem, that'll still see me into Preston for about half past six. 5.30 arrives, still no bus. I go to the customer service window, and I have a phone number passed to me. So I call the number on the card, and ask the girl at the other end how late the bus is going to be.
"No problem, let me just check that for you-" and she hangs up.
I call back, and the man on the other end says he's noted my number down and will call me back. This never happens. At 6pm, I'm starting to get annoyed. At 6.20, I go back to the customer service windows and ask the woman there to find out how late the bus is going to be. After a short phone call, she returns and tells me that "it's over an hour late."
"Yes, I can see that it's over an hour late. I just told you that."

At 6.35 (95 minutes late), the bus finally departs and eventually makes its way into Preston at 7.35. A speedy walk (and a bit of a run) towards the ground gets me outside the turnstile in time to hear the referee's whistle signal the start of the game. Fucking buses.

Inside I find Paul, Janice and Helen - my favourite away match companions - and drop myself into an empty seat next to them. The first half is already under way as I settle in, and very soon a Nicky Adams shot curls over Andy Lonergan in the Preston goal to give City an early lead. (The Addams Family theme tune follows from a section of fans. Get it?) Eight minutes later, a deflected shot from Chris Brown (you know, that singer who beat the piss out of his girlfriend*) flummoxes Chris Weale and levels for the home side. During the first half (which is a good display of football), Helen becomes fixated with the Preston fans as she develops a passionate hatred for one in particular. I can see why - he appears to have spent next to no time watching his team play, preferring instead to gesture randomly at City fans. Fat chav twat.

[*Not really. That was an entirely different Chris Brown. He's also not Olympic 4x400m silver medalist Chris Brown of the Bahamas, nor is he Houston Texans running back Kris Brown.]

At half time, Paul hands me the mug I asked him to pick up from the club shop. Eight fucking quid! Thieving cunts.

[And wouldn't you just know, it's one of those fucking '3-D' ones as well. I'm told there was a cheaper option, but it was ugly. Fair enough, I don't want my collection sullied by the presence of unpleasant tat. Eight quid it is.]

During the break, an infinitely confusing game (?) is played out on the pitch while the stadium announcer reads out some scores. He takes great delight in revealing that Burnley are 1-0 down at Hartlepool, so much so that he has to read it out twice.

Just after the hour, Brown's at it again as he heads PNE's second. Fat Chav Twat is still doing his gesturing thing. The fat chav twat. Helen's simmering hatred of the man appears to have raised her body temperature by about nine degrees. In the last fifteen minutes, City bring on Lloyd Dyer, Paul Dickov and Yann Kermorgant (or, as the stadium announcer called him when announcing the teams, "some Frenchman I can't pronounce", hence the chant from some City fans earlier: "Bring on the Frenchman!"); all of this is to no avail. Dickov's impact on the game is to cut down Liam Chilvers, for which he narrowly escapes a booking, and get flagged offside and subsequently and inexplicably get in a protracted argument with Lonergan. The referee blows his whistle - City are out.

A few minutes later, I part from my trio of friends and start my walk back to the bus station. As I pass the club shop, I find myself talking to an obviously tired middle-aged man and a small blonde woman. Their attire makes it clear that they're staff at the club, and as we walk and talk I learn that Simon is apparently the Deepdale Duck, and Vicky is his helper.

[I don't ask exactly what it is she helps him with; I feel this would be too much information.]

With these two I walk back towards the bus station. We stop off at the shop so the Duck can get a couple of tinnies to neck on the way home. As he makes these crucial purchases, I watch the little tv mounted on the brackets near the counter. I'm watching a news report on the goings-on at West Ham. Apparently the sheer volume of scumbags at a game between two sides from the shitty end of London has caused this game to become a sideshow for a remake of Football Factory (sans cockney twat Danny Dyer, but with loads of other cockney twats thrown in to make up for it). There's a shock.

[The police have to take some of the blame for this one. It was their decision to halve Millwall's ticket allocation to 1500, thereby guaranteeing that Millwall fans would either end up in the home end or turn up without a ticket anyway. What did they think was going to happen - Millwall fans staying at home because they couldn't get a ticket in the 'right' end? No, the ones who were going made the decision to go as soon as the draw paired them with their local rivals - ticket or no ticket. If the police had handled this properly, they could've made things a lot easier for themselves by allowing the ticketing to be done by the people who know what they're fucking doing and thus have all the Millwall fans together, rather than marauding groups of ticketless scumbags in the streets during the game. But no, the police know best.]

I walk the rest of the way to the bus station with the Duck and his helper. As we arrive there, he offers me a little nugget of information: "Did you know this is the biggest bus station in Europe?" He's more amused by this fact than he is proud. Rightly so.

I go looking for a toilet (mostly to get some new tissues - the only explanation I'm giving is to repeat the words 'chest infection'), and nearby I find Alan (see Sheffield United, August 18th), and we have a brief discussion about the game. We meet again a few minutes later on the coach to London but after I make several attempts at conversation (each one interrupted before the first word by a coughing fit) I give up and decide to try to get some sleep. This isn't an easy task though; at Liverpool a large (and very cold) woman gets on and sits - without hesitation - next to me. I wake up at Birmingham to discover I'm sitting on my own. I get off to see if there are any reasonably-priced drinks in the coach station. There aren't, so I get back on the coach. I wake up again around Oxford and find an old bloke is sitting with his legs wide apart, squashing me into a corner and causing me even more pain to my back and legs. I'm not conscious enough to say anything to anyone though, so back to sleep I go, on and off, all the way to London. Worst night's sleep I've ever had.

I wander around Victoria, eyes still sealed shut, trying to freshen up. Not happening. I walk up to Sainsbury's and grab some drinks - something I've desperately needed since about 11pm. Not two yards from the door, I've drained a bottle of Oasis and am halfway through a second. That's woken me up - now for some food. Into the usual place for a simple egg on toast before the 8.30 coach up to Leicester, which gets back for 11am. I arrive home at 11.40, giving me about 20 minutes to wash and dress and get ready for work.

The moral of the story is: Even if you're fucking mental, don't ever use fucking Megabus. Even their name is shit and misleading. There are several descriptions I could give you for this company, and none of them involve the word 'mega' as a standalone adjective. They do, however, all incorporate the word 'cunts'. For example: "Megabus are a useless shower of cunts."

Final score: Preston 2 Leicester 1
Time: 25 hours 10 minutes
Ticket: £10
Coaches: Leicester-Derby £2, Preston-London £10, London-Leicester £9. Total: £21
Buses: Derby-Manchester £6.20, Manchester-Preston £3. Total: £9.20
Total: £40.20