Buses. Let’s first consider the fact that the word ‘bus’ is a shortened version of ‘omnibus’, meaning ‘for everyone’. But is it really a case of omnibus by name, omnibus by nature? Well yes, the bus is for the use of all - except those who wish to smoke, consume food or drink, are teenagers or who cannot meet the expense of extortionate fares. So yeah, that’s about everyone, right?
Don’t think, of course, that I disagree with any of those people being shunned from public transport. There are people-a-plenty that I don’t want to share my X2 ride with, namely old people, drunken people (inappropriately drunken people), charvs – I could go on. In fact, at the pinnacle of public transport hell is Other Passengers.
So I’ll start with old people. Not all of them, but a landslide majority of them are the kind that I thought belonged only to Coronation Street episodes of yesteryear. Bitter expressions on shrivelled faces, beige shoes and the odd hairnet here and there. Yes, old people hate buses and other passengers on them but oh how they love to hate them! It’s the ones that choose to travel by bus at the time of day when kids are coming out of school and proceed to talk very loudly and in a very sort of high-born, English peer of the realm imitation, about how teenagers ought not to travel home on buses when they have young legs to carry them. It strikes me as fascinating that these crones have all week to do their shopping in Marks & Spencer – plus an abundance of shops that are much more local – but go on weekdays and catch the school-run bus home. If only kids had the same choice to say “oh you know what, it’s geriatric day at M&S, best not go to school today so as to avoid that rabble on the bus.”
Then there are the charvs that gravitate towards the back of the bus, upstairs, and invariably start a bangin’ bus rave with their phones. More often than not you’ll find evidence of them having journeyed recently, in the form of cigarette burns on the seat, an empty Bella bottle rolling around the deck or infantile and multiple scrawlings of words like “Mobsy”, which I am assuming can only be their names for each other. You’ll also become well informed of who is spending time in bus shelters with whom, information identifiable by the words “luvz”, “4evaz”, “iz lush”, and various obscenities.
There is, however, one advantage to bus travel, and that is the humorous passenger. This may come in the form of a lady with a cat in a carry-cage, asleep, or maybe a hippie-hater. Note: the latter only appear late at night, invariably intoxicated and keen to amiably disparage the group of gig-goers inhabiting half of the top deck. On two separate occasions, being one of these gig-goers, I have been threatened by fag-wielding girls from “The Foyer”, who refused to believe a member of the party was called Thomas and labelled another, a “long-haired hippie”; on the second occasion a drunkard mocked our “sandshoes and plimsoles” - because ladies should wear dress shoes.
Aside from passengers, there are the drivers. There are only two breeds of bus driver: old tyrant or young charv (see above). The former like to overcharge, insult and ignore customers, and share a common vendetta against teenagers. Even the momentary joy of reporting them to the bus company and receiving free bus vouchers isn’t enough to settle my utter loathing of grumpy bus drivers. However there is the odd anomaly, who tends to be much more pleasant than the average bus driver and genuinely brightens up my day – one asked me recently why I chose to wear a tea cosy on my head.
