In this age of climate change, carbon footprints and conservation, we are often told that we need to make more use of public transport.
Having only just obtained a provisional driving license, these pleas don’t mean much to me at the moment - I’m a captive customer for local bus services.
For this reason, I have built up an irrational catalogue of grievances towards the public tra
nsport system. I often complain of nauseatingly turbulent rides, irregular time-tabling and, very occasionally, grumpy drivers. A few nights ago, following a series of just-missed buses and nearly-missed buses and didn’t-turn-up-until-20-minutes-late buses, I began to vent my annoyance through a session of whining at my dad. Imagine my disappointment when I was presented, not with a series of sympathetic “I’ll drive you theres”, but with a ‘when I was a lad’ story, a bleak description of something called the General Omnibus.
The General Omnibus, I was told, was the bus service of the 1960s and 70s in the North East. While many people may think of this as a golden age for the Blackpool Trams, the General Omnibus was apparently a different story.
Spartan threadbare seats, large polluting buses and questionable safety standards all featured in my dad’s fond memories of the ‘Gennie’, as he called it. The buses were badly maintained and never on schedule, and, not surprisingly, since they were packed with teenagers, harboured an interesting cocktail of unpleasant smells.
But, I was told, the Gennie did have one saving grace. Unlike today’s anarchy-ridden buses, there was always a stern conductor on board, in my dad’s unique words, “To make you sit up straight and make sure there was no hanky-panky”.
Now, the only authority on local buses is the presence of a multitude of signs forbidding the intrusive use of iPods, mobile phones, and , bizarrely, the consumption of food, “For everyone’s safety and comfort”.
Interestingly, the effect of these signs appears to have diffused into the general population of bus riders. I recently (perhaps naively) attempted to eat a Crunchie during a bus journey and found myself the recipient of several stern looks from a fellow passenger who seemed particularly aggrieved. So here, I promise to in future keep my liking for honeycomb-based snacks at bay until I have well and truly left the bus.
