On the buses
Jeremy Clarke
‘At the age of 35,’ said Evelyn Waugh, ‘one needs to go to the moon, or some such place, to recapture the excitement with which one first landed at Calais.’ Well, I don’t suppose Evelyn Waugh went anywhere by bus, which is a pity. If he had, he’d have found all the excitement he could possibly have wanted. The other day I came across the following letter, written in 1924, reprinted in a collection of humorous anecdotes, edited by Nigel Rees. The letter, passed on to Rees by a librarian at the National Tramway Museum, was headed ‘The Royal Infirmary’ and addressed to the general manager of an omnibus service.
Dear Sir, I was prevailed upon by my husband, last Saturday, to make a journey in one of your motor omnibuses, and I am very pleased indeed that I did so, for during the journey down, a floating kidney, which has for many years resisted the best medical skill of this city, settled into its normal position and I have been free from pain ever since.
She goes on:
Should you wish to communicate with me, please do so at the above address, where I am being treated for a lacerated throat due to swallowing my false teeth upon the return journey. Yours truly, A VERY GRATEFUL PASSENGER.
And even today travelling by bus can be physically demanding. The week before last I saw a news paragraph stating that an elderly lady had broken her neck after being sent flying on a bus. And last week, our next-door neighbour, Bill, aged 92, broke an arm after being thrown violently forward while waiting to alight. The trouble is due, I think, to the fierce brakes fitted on buses and to the congenital solipsism of bus drivers, who never give a moment’s thought to the effect that slamming their foot on the brakes can have on the passengers behind. I am speaking here as an ex-bus conductor. ‘Hold tight now!’ (ding-ding!) was my catchphrase. Or, if my regular driver, Jerzy, was having one of those days, ‘Brace yourselves!’ And I speak as one who moved about his bus cautiously, from one handhold to the next, like a monkey in the branches of a tree, as Jerzy, bent furiously over the steering wheel, accelerated madly from stop to stop as if we were fleeing from the Nazis.
That letter of thanks to the general manager of the omnibus company rings true. None of my passengers complained about swallowing their false teeth. But more than once I retrieved a set from under a seat that had shot out as Jerzy let out the clutch with his customary violence.
I worked with Jerzy all the time because no one else would. He was unpopular with other conductors because he took no notice of either the single bell to stop, the double bell to go, or the double tap on the interior window to miss one out. A law unto himself, he would stop at every stop, open the doors for a few seconds, then shut them and take off again. I might as well have not been there. In fact, once, when I hopped off to make use of a public lavatory, he left without me and went from London to Southend-on-Sea, picking up and dropping down passengers all the way, without realising I was missing. I was left standing at the bus stop with my ticket machine round my neck, like a fool, waiting for the next one.
If a ticket inspector hadn’t got on at Southend seafront, it was reported at the disciplinary hearing, my absence might never have come to light. Assuming I must have been collecting fares on the upper deck, the inspector went about his business downstairs. Only when he popped his head upstairs was he able to account for the fact that just a very small minority of passengers had paid for their journey.
We were let off with a warning, of course. Embezzlement, involving the circumspect issue of dud tickets, was the cardinal sin. And you either didn’t do that because it was too much like hard work; or you did it with the zeal of a fanatic until you were caught and sacked on the spot, generally not more than a month later. Jerzy was finally sacked after being involved in three accidents in a single shift, including running over a man who was lying in the road having an epileptic fit. I nearly wore my fingers out filling in accident forms that day.
So no, Mr Waugh, you don’t have to go to the moon to recapture the excitement of travelling. Hop on a bus. Buses offer all the visceral excitement one can possibly ever need.
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