The eventful tales of a bus traveller

It is not only fiscal frailty that makes me travel on public transport. I think there is a responsibility, both political and private (one prime minister lost votes when he admitted he didn’t know the price of a metro ticket), to use public transport. 

In a big place like London it is a zeitgeist touchstone that restores outline to a blurred city.

I prefer buses to trains. They are cheaper and not full of corporate Goths with briefcases.  When I lived in Notting Hill I wrote a poem to the No 9 bus. In the south there are few that beat the No 159 to Marble Arch.  I recently sat next to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who looked like an ancient whelk. “Please don’t talk to me,” he pleaded.

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There is a social hierarchy on the London buses; babies top it. A particular baby, the hood of his pram is  filled with scarlet artificial flowers disguising speakers that storm out jigajag music.

He is attached to his mother by a long cord which he pulls when he wants attention. It makes the sound of a police siren and this makes him laugh and laugh. The bus drivers hate this baby, “no more buggies”, they shout when they see him.

And then there is an eight-year-old called Starman who sets about pulling the  seat apart. “Stop it, Starman,” says his mum, who  then explains to the bus: “You know, he can’t go on the quiet bus (in England there are special quiet buses and trains for people who hate noise). He’s got special needs.”

An amazing number  of people sob silently. Sitting next to me is a girl, her face wet with tears. She could be a migrant refused entry, suffered a miscarriage, lost her keys but the only English she knows has been culled from catalogues. She points to the frying pan she has just bought and says proudly: “Eco-friendly, non-stick.”

I once saw a girl on the Tube powdering her face. She dropped the puff onto the lap of the man sitting next to her reading a newspaper. She took some time catching his attention and then pointed at his crotch. He looked down, saw the puff, opened his flies and popped it in. I got out at the next stop.

block_quotes_start Please fasten your seat belts and we suggest you keep them on for the duration
of the trip block_quotes_end

Buses are a moving landscape of people. Some who can’t afford taxis use buses as removal lorries; two men carry a large display cabinet full of clattering china. The sour old woman, a regular, murmurs, “bleeding pilferers”. When a man gets on carrying a golf bag, she says loudly “toffs”.

There is human drama. A large young man, an adultescent, is dressed as a fairy. He is with his grandma who says, “You goin’ to look a right twit going to a party dressed like that.”

“It’s not a party, grandma, it’s a club wif drugs.”

“Drugs,” she shouts.  “You ask them they got anyfink for sciatica,  wot they give me up the hospital is no bloody good.” 

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There is also the Oxford Tube, which is really a bus and which I rode for years in the hope of meeting a man who would fall in love with me. Now it is filled with Chinese boys reading maths at Oxford. The driver thinks he is a pilot. “Please fasten your seat belts and we suggest you keep them on for the duration of the trip,” he intones. “In the case of emergency, there is a First Aid kit under the seat.”

A little boy next to me, who is carrying the skeleton of a squirrel he found in a park, says to his mum: “When are we going into the air, mum?”

Ah, the London buses with the ancient women  in wheelchairs, the feral children, the bitched up arguments (“the trouble wif you is you lefargic, Bingo”), the animals, the Special Needs dog, the Australians who are carrying a bed, the artisan dirt, the homeless and those in emotional disarray. They’re where all life and death take place. “You know our Corrie passed,” says the woman behind me, “hit down the stairs and that no good son buried her under the house.”

It turns out she is talking about an episode in EastEnders.

Yep, My City Bus in Cape Town has a way to go,  although recently a driver got out and relieved himself against a tree.