You’re standing at a bus stop on Linden Road. An elderly couple are craning their necks to see past the curve in the road. Is it coming? Where is it? It’s late, you know. Should have been here two minutes ago. The road just prior to a bus stop is loaded with uncertainly. In the next few seconds a bus might arrive, or it might not, and you have no way of knowing when you’ll have to leap up and wave you arm. So you watch, eagle eyed for something, anything that resembles a huge brightly lit hulk of metal on wheels. A lorry tricks you for a moment with its low rumble and you step forward an inch. The oldsters are getting restless. The woman has moved from the shelter to the edge of the road, positioning herself to board the bus that isn’t here. A young woman arrives at the shelter and stands between you and the couple. Will she try and board before you or will the honour of queuing be upheld? It doesn’t matter. She’s not the type to sit upstairs. Too clean. Too nice. She’ll be down with the pensioners and the mothers. Still you stare at the road. Take your eyes off it for a moment and the bus might pass you by. It’s happened before, that momentary lapse in concentration, and you’re determined it won’t happen again.
Suddenly the bus appears, gliding like a whale around the corner. Everyone stares at the cab and signals with their arms, willing the driver to stop as if he might not have noticed people standing at a bus stop where only his service calls. The indicators flash and the door swings open. A man gets off so our frantic watching and waving wasn’t necessary after all, but it’s best to be safe. The couple flash their passes, the woman pays (yes, she got on before you) and you slot your pound coin and twenty pence into the slot, smiling at the driver and murmuring a “Cheers” because you’re nice like that and you know the kind of people he has to deal with. He ignores you, checks the money and presses the button. The ticket machine whirrs and spits out a strip of paper which you take. Up the stairs you go to the front seats where the TV screen showing cheap adverts and, inexplicably, extreme sports can be avoided. You unzip your coat, take off your hat, plug in your walkman, stick your feet up by the window and take out your book. In an hour you’ll be in Perry Bar. It’s going to be a long hour.
And they’re off! It’s Number 11, Ashton, on the first leg to Perry Barr, with the queue-jumping lady downstairs.
What was that about extreme sports? On the telly, or in terms of finding a seat?
“gliding like a whale”… not sure about that one Pete :)
Hurrmmm, the screen reminds me of the all too pervasive amount of media forced in to our field of sound and vision. Almost as if the assumption is that people can’t cope for more than a second without something cramming an advert at you (and the evilly inventive sods are thinking up more and more ways to do it by the second). Half the reason I stopped commuting on the tube was that even if you tried you couldn’t avoid seeing an advert (even if just in your peripheral vision, trust me I tried!!!) for the entire length of any journey.
Thought it might just be me, but I think Dave C is right. It all reads very nicely indeed, except for the whale thing.
Was thinking about the whale thing as the 11 pulled up today. It does glide along the relatively flat roads around here and it is big like a whale, but in all honesty the reference is to a Hunt Emerson cartoon which I’ll try and remember to post a copy of. When you see that it’ll make sense.
In case it’s not obvious, this was the equivalent of a sketch. I was just playing about with words. Expect more of this sort of thing over the next month or so.
More bus love here: All Aboard! (Guardian). I reckon your bus journey book could have legs. (ahem.)
Bastard!
“Great British Bus Journeys travels to Britain’s most unfashionable towns (using the least reliable method of transport) to uncover the nation’s secret history.”
Ah well, at least there’s a market…
Exactly my point! Rather than pissing on your cornflakes, I was hoping to inspire with the knowledge that yours is a shared and growing interest.
Now get out there and shake that niche.
Gliding like a whale:
See where I’m coming from?
That bus isn’t gliding, it’s tearing up the place!
Yes, but Emerson’s drawn a London bus. They do tear about, but the Number 11 glides. Which is my point. It looks like a whale and it glides, which is a strange thing to see coming up the road.
(Sheesh!)
Does Hunt still live in Birmingham? Perhaps you ask him to draw the number 11. I feel then we can bring this matter to a close?