Poor Man About Town

I was using the bus yesterday. Some man in his late fifties boarded the bus, he came and sat down in the seat opposite. He was wearing a cardigan cum winter coat - it looked like it was made out of bath rug. I did not pay him much mind until from out of nowhere he produced a tin of strong lager from which he was gulping down. He concealed the tin, opened, into a pocket in his bath rug jacket. These guys are ingenious in smuggling opened beer tins onto the bus.

Labels: alcohol, alcoholism, beer can man, buses, public transport

Today was a rainy soggy day. The buses were running like cattle trucks. I was in Sutton, I attempted to avoid the school crush and got to my bus stop at 2.45, the bus was running and the bus that I wanted zoomed by packed with passengers - it zoomed by 10 minutes later than what it said on the time table. The next bus came at 10 minutes later than what the time table stated - it was packed but the driver allowed us on. We reached Carlshalton; there was a mass of school girls who came on the bus like a flock of mad geese and sounding similar. Some girls tried to board the bus through the middle doors, but a West Indian man denied them entrance "get in the queue, respect", phew that was a relief. He then shut the door via the emergency control, well it was an emergency. The driver seemed panicked, he turned off the engine, but did not tell any of the girls to get off the bus nor did he shut the doors on his part of the bus. Eventually the bus moved off. Some of the girls sounded quite political commenting that the school should invest its money in buses rather than in laptops. Although they were quite loud and got on my nerves, they were quite well-behaved. Got off at Croydon to catch my connecting bus - it came, it was packed to the degree that faces of school kids were squashed up against the door windows - they looked in a complete state of resigned despair. Something told me, this is not right - Transport for London is crap, it does not care about its passengers, it could not manage a kiddies merry go round let alone a bus network.

Labels: buses, public transport, schoolkids, tfl, transport, transport for london

The liberalisation of taking baby buggies on the buses has gone too far - baby buggies are one thing, but a king-sized doubled bed x 3 is another. Intolerable parents are becoming increasingly tolerable by buying monster prams for their sprogs to take on the bus. The intolerable parent gives you that 'get out the fucking way' kind of look. They have that Bo(z)no kind arrogance that if you do not get out of the fucking way and offer your space to them, you will be wiped off the face of universe. The driver does not care, he will allow around three, sometimes four, of these monstrosities on the bus.

Labels: babies, buses, Parenting, Parents, public transport