Buses

Once upon a time many years ago, two buses an hour would stop in my parents village. We knew when they were coming and villagers who wanted to ride queued patiently at the stop before getting on in an orderly fashion.

Today it’s a bit different. One stop serves several different bus routes; consequently nobody is quite sure where they are in the queue. Normally it doesn’t matter too much anyway, because another bus will come along in a few minutes time.

This is just as well when the students where I live now are waiting in the morning trying to get a bus to take them the ten minute walk to the college.

There are usually two or three people standing patiently at the stop when a bus turns up. As soon as the doors open a horde of teenagers appear from nowhere and push towards each door. Old ladies trying to alight from the front of the vehicle are battered by a swarm of muscular young men, while any poor mother trying to get her child’s buggy on at the middle door can’t move for some minutes as the press of enthusiastic college goers push past to get onto the bus without paying.

More students are piling out of the railway station while the bus is stationary. Obviously they have already learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So they run straight through the taxi rank, out of the “in” entrance of the station, straight across the road and the inconvenient roundabout, bypass the pedestrian safety rails on the corners and charge along the pavement to reinforce the crowd already trying to board the bus.

Just suppose this is one of those mornings when you have actually managed to push your way through the scrum and you’ve climbed aboard. Each youth on the bus obviously wants to get off the bus first when it arrives at the stop they want. So what do they do? Every one of them crowds round the exit door holding on manfully to the rails provided.

I have sometimes managed to get on after these people and can see several seats at the rear that are unoccupied. As I start pushing my way through, some youngsters with old fashioned ideas try to give up their seat to the elderly gent trying to get past. That is a fatal mistake, two or three youngsters within sight of the now vacant seat, leap into the space.

This is quite remarkable because if I try to do the same thing, the person in front always happens to be wearing a very large rucksack and turns sideways to let me past, thus obstructing the available space even more. Besides that, in this area the lady with the push chair is still trying to move sufficient people to park her chair safely in the space provided.

At last the bus moves off and manages to travel for one stop. Shock horror! Another batch of enthusiasts for the college are waiting. Surprisingly the bus driver stops to pick them up hopefully calling “pass down the bus please” as they force their way on.

There are never any Inspectors at this time of day, so the overloaded bus lurches along the road, hoping that all other drivers will follow the Highway code.

Another stop and they all try to get off. This takes five minutes or so, as the occupants of the top deck start to thunder down the stairs, getting in the way of those other students trying to leave their seats and go to the exit door. At the front there is another queue of passengers pushing past any one who is trying to get on.

At last normality is restored. The bus will now wait quietly at the stop for a moment or two while the driver tries hard to recover his sanity.

However the panic to get to the college is not yet over. While the driver collects himself, the passengers run across the road, weaving between passing vehicles until at last they reach the pavement outside the college. Then they all stop and begin shouting to their mates, obstructing the pavement for all pedestrians other than college goers. As we all know, young people under the age of twenty are deaf and need to screech as loudly as possible to make themselves heard. The noise can be heard even from inside the bus over the rumble of the traffic.

Eventually the bus moves off leaving the mass of young humanity free to do anything they feel like, except of course going into college for their lectures.