I hadn’t realised that buses had not evolved.
I got on one for the first time the other day. The driver seemed disinterested in having me join his practically empty bus. There were only two other people on board who as I glanced to look at them looked as though they had given the driver no trouble at all: two thin sad faced men who sat silently apart from each other looking out of the windows and seeing nothing.
The driver though was already annoyed.
‘Single to Wellingborough please,’ I sang out, hoping I was using the correct terminology.
I knew from folk lore that drivers of buses hate handling notes and I had a handful of coins merrily jingling in my hand at the ready.
‘What,’ the driver asked with exasperation through what looked like missile defence toughened glass.
‘Single to Wellingborough please,’ I replied, already feeling my confidence ebbing away to a level that matched the defeated expressions of the other two passengers.
The driver seemed to not know the place even though it was the final destination of the bus.
‘Wellingborough,’ I said enunciated loudly again, wondering if I’d got on the right bus after all.
‘£3.30,’ the bus driver announced flatly.
I was stunned. As much as that?
I handed over my coins.
‘Do I get a ticket?’ I asked.
I was thinking back to the wonderful coloured tickets on the Rotherham buses when conductors used to walk up and down the bus handing out colour coded tickets after punching holes through them.
The bus driver pointed with irritation to a machine near the very front of the bus where a ticket was appearing.
I laughed, ‘You can see I’m not used to doing this,’ I say by way of apology, as I reached for it.
The bus driver isn’t interested, he’s already swinging out into traffic propelling me with the sudden momentum down the entire length of the bus.
I find a seat at the back of the bus, and sit down to watch the world slip by.
Travelling by bus is a nightmare.
A nightmare.
I’d forgotten how much of a nightmare.
The bus is noisy. It travels along country lanes where cars are precariously parked and where it has to edge slowly by them. At other times it is racing through the countryside. At such speeds every bump is transferred directly into the passenger’s skeleton. These constant jolts turn you into a soup of disjointed bones and shake anything that was human in you each time you are thrown up from your seat. It’s like being in a roller-coaster car. I find that my tonsils are shaken from their moorings and are in turns to be found either at the pit of my stomach or at the very top of my throat. you can’t read. You can’t write. You can’t think. It is utter misery.
I’m rattled by the time I arrive in Wellingborough. I’d imagined being able to relax on a bus… but it wasn’t to be… anything but.
The journey back was a similar nightmare. What is also so frustration is the length of time it takes: an hour, when by car you can be there in about twenty minutes. The sense of frustration is compounded each time the bus ignores the sign that points the direct to Northampton, and when the bus turns towards yet another small village where there are no passengers to be picked up.
I wanted to go ‘green’ but this was such an expensive and uncomfortable way to travel.
I felt ill when I got back home. I felt so tired and exhausted I had to go to bed vowing never again to travel anywhere by bus ever again.
