So, it’s Monday morning, and off I go to work, with my normal Monday quota of enthusiasm and gneral perkiness (i.e. stumbling down the street mumbling “Dear God, why didn’t You take me in my sleep?”).
Into Gloucester Green bus station I go; it’s just been revamped. They have replaced the black tarmac and white markings with dark red tarmac and yellow markings. To somebody, this must constitute an improvement. I look around for the 66 bus, have the usual conversation with today’s troglodyte driver (Yes, Kingston Bagpuize is on your route. Yes, you can sell me a return ticket. No, the magic box will not steal your soul, it’s just for printing the ticket out, see? Ooh, look, paper. No, you mustn’t eat it, I need it.) I take my seat. Eight forty-five, time for the off! The mighty engine judders into life! (Purple prose © Boys’ Own Paper, 1935).
And, from somewhere, comes a loud electronic Bing! sound, swiftly followed by another, and yet another. “Ah,” I think to myself, “this is the reversing-out beeper, designed to alert the inattentive to the fact that several tons of metal is reversing towards them…” Bing! “It’s a bit loud today.” Bing!
I hold on to the “reversing-out” theory for as long as he continues to reverse… but, when the bus goes into forward gear, and continues to go Bing!, I am forced to reconsider.
We speed out of Oxford. OK, that’s an exaggeration. I can’t be held responsible, my prose style is suffering, on account of this bus keeps going Bing! at me. Loudly.
What in the name of St. Jude and St. Christopher (patron saints of Stagecoach Swindon travellers, guess why) is going on here? Bing! Are we using active sonar? Bing! Is this bus tracking enemy submarines? (I consider this hypothesis, and eventually discard it, on the grounds that Oxfordshire is not known for submarines.)
Bing! Bing! Bing!
We get to the Tubney roundabout, where the Very Large Man who boards by the railway station negotiates with the driver to be set down. I always wonder about him… every day he gets off the bus between its normal stops, at a place with no buildings in sight, and immediately vanishes into the adjacent woods. Does he have some job which requires him to frolic among the trees all day…? I’d quite like a job like that, except in the hayfever season. But I have no opportunity to think about that now, because the bus is going Bing! again.
And, finally, the penny drops. Normally, the bus proceeds in a series of violent jolts, as the driver’s lead-shod feet spasm alternately on brake and accelerator - rather as though the vehicle had, instead of wheels, epileptic kangaroos. However, today’s journey, apart from the Bings!, has been remarkably smooth - well, as smooth as a knackered bus running on badly maintained roads can manage. The Bing! machine is wired up to the brakes. Our driver, (and, incidentally, everyone in the Home Counties) is receiving an audible warning whenever his pressure on the brake pedal gets up near its normal whiplash-inducing level. No wonder it’s been going off all the time.
I’m a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand, the involuntary gymnastics caused by the usual excessive braking are a bit, well, wearing for one of my age and dignity. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to finish a journey in the same seat I started in. On the other hand… the bus keeps going Bing! at me, very loudly. Is there some middle ground, involving neither Bings! nor jolts? That would involve the bus company hiring drivers who can actually drive buses, which, let’s face it, Ain’t Gonna Happen.
So. On my way to work, I seem to have a choice. Whiplash, or perforated eardrums. “Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”
