Mr Plutonium and I

Mr Plutonium and i settled down nicely: he snored, i sat with my earplugs in & within 5 minutes it was like we'd been married 15 years. of course he wouldn't do anything around the compartment, spent all his time down the restaurant carriage and really had gotten out of shape but aside from that all was well. leaving Beijing was a trawl through urban neighbourhoods until we hit some grassy plains then high hilly mountains, grey-brown sand covered in wisps of green, through small Chinese villages, larger industrial towns, valleys covered in vines and then winding by rivers and by the side of other greener hills. it was beautiful. our compartment was one of 8 in the carriage, served by an individual guard who seemed to have the responsibility of taking care of us which he did in an inimitable style: he simply ignored us most of the time and then upon other occasions came into the compartment yelling at the top of his voice. it did rather liven up the day as we sat terrified wondering if he was going to call in his red guard pals to beat the door down and search our bags. i realised he was a little, well, very 'Chinese', when a pile of sheets hit me in the side of the head rather unexpectedly jolting me out of my window-gazing daze. when i turned round in surprise he yelled at me in Mandarin whilst nashing his rather outgrowing teeth and pushing his glasses back up his nose about 3 times before storming off to the next compartment to repeat the same gracious delivery of our linen. luckily he didn't wake Mr Plutonium who just snored, burped and turned over. i've had enough: i'm leaving him for the Spaniard next door. i wish. the day went on and soon the sun set over the dusty plains we were travelling through and soon we were due to arrive at the Chinese-Mongolian border as we neared 11pm. i knew this as Mr Nash arrived yelling, seemingly trying to get his teeth back under the control of his gums, and pointing at his watch. 11pm and we were knackered: me as i'd been up since 5am and Mr Plutonium due to the effort expended snoring. getting off the train was fine as i knew that at this point it had to have its wheels changed: the track gauge was of a different size on the Mongolian side of the border from the Chinese. 'how long we wait?' i asked Mr Nash, nursing a linen-sized lump on the side of my head. 'Un hour' he nashed back, giving me a nasty look (strangely looking like Old Granny which worried me in a vague kind of way). he got back on the train which then was shunted round the corner waving as he went. maybe he did like me after all. he spat on the ground and had a light nash. maybe not. so there we were: about 100 tourists all waiting on a dark Chinese platform late at night and, guess what, one solitary 'supermarket'. i used to play a game called 'bundle' at school where if a person fell over in the playground then someone would shout 'bunnnndddlllleeee' and half the playground would then dive on top of the person who'd fallen over until there was a huge pile of kids and one poor kid stuck on the bottom. well finding this supermarket was like playing 'Bundle - The Adult Version' with a race towards the door, fights in the aisles and shelves being stripped of everything edible you could imagine. mainly beer. i was about half way in when i realised i'd made a mistake and tried to head back out again. another mistake. try playing 'Supermarket Sweep' in 3 aisles, one exit and 100 people: i was stuck and couldn't move