UTTERMEDIA

Motorway service stations - sprawling damp meccas to stale Gingsters pasties and dog-eared A-Zs.

Like your worst zombie nightmare come true, mustached midlanders and hyperactive helpline workers stumble and stagger gormlessly into one another like a pit of suicidal science-lab rats.

But you desperately need a piss and you feel safe in M&S, even if its full of the Somerfield massive uttering “well posh innit”.

Here are 5 sights you will see at any service station anytime anywhere in glorious England…

1. An obese dog with matching obese owner. Not walking but waddling side to side like a tired discarded dingy abandoned in a rundown eastcoast harbour.

2. A vending machine repair man sporting Lake District sized sweat patches, with thin gold spectacles - the arms disappearing into the side of his head, swallowed by bloated red flesh. Busy doing nothing. Think doomed bomb disposal expert (Fox Mulder, first X-Files movie) but a definite bum exposure expert.

3. A child called Jake being shouted at by a short tempered parent possibly with a leather bumbag or “sun hat” that you’d find at a local village fete. Or Skegness.

4. A discarded pair of baby shoes. Thoughtfully put somewhere in view, maybe atop a payphone or charity collection box. Some poor child somewhere is being dragged around on bloody stumps, probably alongside a chubby canine.

5. Lads. Dopey lads holiday lads. You know, Carling for breakfast, blokes minivan trip to Blackpool to tie Wayne to a lamp post before he ties the knot with Shannon. Careful, these guys spit and sniff hard - but they’re shy. They’ll piss at the urinal facing the corner and will avoid eye contact (and soap) at all costs.

So next time you’re sat head-in-hands on the great white chair crying into your fingernails trying to poo in peace and not pieces, refer to this handy list and see just how easy character assassination can be at one of our infrastructures many decaying armpits.

Brought to you from Chorley Services on the M6. A blog for the bog.