Trains and boats and planes ... well, anyway trains and trams!

I fear I may be turning into a grump! It’s all the fault of school kids on buses!

Today I spent a good part of the morning helping out my daughter by doing some touching-up of paintwork at her house. I then went on to the local Aldi store and stocked up with odds and ends they sell at good prices. Then I caught the bus home. All very efficiently done!

It started to go a little haywire when the bus arrived at Uppermill and was invaded by pupils from the local high school. For some odd reason they finish at a ridiculously early hour on a Wednesday. If they can be catching a bus before 2.00pm, they must finish at about 1.30. How is this possible? Whatever the answer to that question, the fact remains that masses of school kids got on the bus, pushing and shoving each other until they had somehow managed to accommodate themselves almost all standing as close as possible to the doors.

At the next stop several adults had to struggle through them in order to get off the bus. One elderly lady with a stick almost fell and had to be helped by a number of other adult passengers. By now there were empty seats in the rear section of the bus, not to mention a completely empty central aisle. However, at the stop after that, where one person alighted, the bus driver refused to allow anyone to get on, declaring that his bus was already too full. You can imagine the reaction of the high school pupils to this. The air was blue. Modern twelve- and thirteen-year-olds know words that I never heard when I was that age. Clearly that aspect of their education is working.

As the bus continued on its way I found it difficult to see exactly where we were on the route and so I stood up in order to have better view. As I edged my way forward, in order to be slightly closer to the door and thus able to avoid having to manoeuvre past too many adolescent bodies with my large bag of shopping, I explained to the young people that if they were to move down the bus and perhaps sit on the available seats or stand in the available aisle space then we might all be more comfortable. In response I received a lot of blank or even puzzled looks.

Obviously the only cool way to travel is standing crushed at the front of the bus. And the best spot of all is leaning against the driver’s cab, beyond the notice that says “NO STANDING PASSENGERS FORWARD OF THIS POINT”. I could almost have understood if the driver had been a good-looking young man - most of front space hoggers were young girls - but this was not the case. Amazing! 

Clearly public transport is not working well for me this week so far. Travelling to my daughter’s house this morning, I grew bored waiting for my usual bus and made the mistake of getting on a different one, but still one which went close to my destination. I knew that this bus went on a more roundabout route but I had not realised, or maybe I had perhaps forgotten, to what extent it did this. Back and forth it went through a hundred and one out of the way housing estates, visiting places which probably only see a bus once in a blue moon. I began to feel like an outside, an intruder, as one passenger after another got on, sometimes not even at a “proper” stop and greeted the driver like an old friend. This feeling was reinforced as they greeted other passengers by name. It was as if I had sneaked my way into a cult outing! It was quite a relief to get off the bus.

Even the trams yesterday were not without their little problems. On the way into Manchester my tram was held up at Victoria Station. Two passengers alighting there had stopped and indicated to the driver that there were two young men towards the rear of the second carriage semi-conscious with the drug Spice. The police were called and the young men were escorted off the tram. It’s a sad and strange aspect of the homelessness problem that you see numbers of young men lying, sitting, semi-standing, leaning against walls, completely oblivious of their surroundings, having taken enough of the drug to remove all awareness.

(Ironically in Frank Herbert’s science-fiction story “Dune”, spice is the name of a drug of a quite different kind: “In the series, the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe is melange, a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some humans, depending upon the dosage and the consumer's physiology. This prescience-enhancing property makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. Melange comes with a steep price, however: it is addictive, and withdrawal is fatal.” Thank you Wikipedia.)

During my return tram journey in the early evening yesterday the tram jerked to a halt. Passengers were thrown around but nobody was hurt. The driver apologised before setting off once more and, when we reached the next stop minutes later, popped put of his cab to check that all was well. In the evening gloom a car had pulled out in front of the tram and, realising what he had done, the driver had then come to a full stop right in front of the tram. Hence the emergency stop. All could have been worse.

Such are the trials and tribulations of public transport!