On The Buses

An old friend, sadly no longer with us, was fond of saying:

"If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess"

I am just back in Malaysia after several weeks travelling around America and Europe, where I acquired a UK old person's bus pass. With just one day available to use it, I opted for a policy of excess and set out on a journey from Sussex to Heathrow Airport.

The first bus, to Tunbridge Wells, had an advert on the back which read 'Ride Regency to Days of Steam'. I pointed this out to the driver when we broke down with steam and hot water emanating from the rear end. Once I reached the town I boarded a bus bound for Bromley. It took nearly 2 hours as we waited patiently for the most decrepit people in Kent to heave, hobble and wobble their way on and off. I used to believe that old age was better than the only alternative but this journey made me think again. I hadn't realised that humans could still function in such an advanced state of atrophy. They all, of course, had the same bus pass as me.

My research indicated that I should next take a bus to East Croyden. I couldn't bring myself to do it. The very name of the place induces in me a feeling of stultified dullness. Instead I chose a route that would take me through Central London.

On the top deck of a bright red London bus there was a good mix of ages and ethnicity but the rate of progress was still painfully slow as stops seemed no more than a couple of hundred yards apart. Fortified with a bacon and egg sandwich at Catford I hopped onto my fifth bus, to Victoria, and noticed the suburban houses getting progressively older as we neared the city centre. I was struck by the neighbourhood high streets which have retained the same size rows of shops which I remember from my childhood growing up in Twickenham; but where there was a butcher a baker and a greengrocer there is now an estate agency an ethnic cafe and a betting shop.

I got off the next bus too soon and walked through Hyde Park, full of sunbathers enjoying a glorious summer day which would have put nowhere on the Mediterranean to shame. Boarding a 94 in Oxford St I was looking at my watch as the journey had taken over 5 hours and I was still a long way from the airport. At Goldhawk Rd we were all told to get off. I don't know what the problem was but the bus was abandoned in the gutter and, after consulting the information board, I caught the next 237 to Hounslow. On this journey an announcement was made that the bus was on diversion, which seemed to mean that it chose traffic choked streets and stopped at places which didn't display its number.

I had a long wait at Hounslow for a 111 and was sorely tempted by the adjacent Piccadilly Line, but a bus pass is just that; it doesn't include the underground and I needed to complete my mission. I eventually reached my destination, with not too long before I could board the plane for Kuala Lumpur. It took 8 hours travel on 8 buses and is not recommended for those in a hurry, but if you have all day to get somewhere, the buses can provide a good platform to watch the world go by and add a bit of a puzzle to solve in navigating a route.

Brexiteers, Trumpeteers and donkeys

We are in America for the first time in 26 years and admire the view from the 35^th floor of our 1920’s built hotel. We’re in the true home of the skyscaper; not New York but Chicago. It’s a surprisingly pleasant city centre with the river artery opening up the foreground of the architect’s creations, but it’s so clean and tidy that the imagination struggles to make the romantic link back to bootleggers and gangsters with violin cases.

Down the road in Ohio the Republican Party is forced to make room for the cuckoo in its nest as Donald Trump gets the presidential nomination and immediately goes into a prolonged sulk because the man he calls ‘Lying Ted’ fails to sufficiently enthuse over his elevation. If the petition supported by both Donald and Ted to allow everyone attending the convention to carry guns with them hadn’t failed, they could have settled their disagreement in an honourable fashion and to the benefit of the rest of the world.

Politics has erupted in America and Europe spewing some sparks but a lot more smoke over the populaces. In London we sat on the top deck of a Boris, the new buses commissioned by the ex- mayor, and spoke politics with an elderly couple who sat behind us. The reserved English manner has been put on hold for Brexit, but strangers approach the subject with extreme caution; it is too raw to get into an argument over and comments begin as mild remarks and only escalate as common ground is found. When we got off I had a proper view of our companions and realised that we’d been talking with the multi-talented Jonathan Miller who used to regularly appear on UK television.

The Brexiteers and the Trumpeteers seem to have a lot in common, which many people see as small minded ignorance and xenophobia. But there is also an element of a stubborn refusal to be pushed around by the establishment and listen to those in power who consider themselves to be their betters. From Chicago we now drive down to Kentucky where a friend we met in Kazakhstan helps us to properly get under the skin of small-town America. Lunching at the truck stop we see that the news has moved on to the Democrats convention but not all is well. The predominantly young supporters of grey-haired Bernie Sanders boo their hero as he tells them that they must now switch their allegiance to support Hilary Clinton against a far greater evil.

On a pub crawl of the tiny cathedral city of Wells, drinking English beer in a suburban Bristol garden and sat around the table in a Devon farmhouse kitchen we’d spent the previous week mulling over the rights and wrongs of another left-wing grey haired old man who was elected leader by young idealists, but who is now struggling to find enough support amongst his MP’s to form a realistic shadow cabinet. The donkey is the symbol of the Democrats but there are also plenty of asses in Britain and while the Tories are in disarray, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party is just a total bloody mess.

Travelling north towards Minnesota we drive through an Amish village, these are people who generally keep themselves apart from mainstream politics and in the current situation can be envied for that.

But while the parties on both sides of the Atlantic are polarised there is a common theme which makes the right and the left opposite sides of the same coin; all their supporters are fed up with mainstream politics and want something different, but the establishment is hell-bent on denying it to them.

In Britain Theresa May was craftily manoeuvred into position and it seems that Conservative party members are too polite to ask why they never got to use their vote. The United States go to the polls in November but will America settle for the equally dull but safe establishment figure of Hilary Clinton, or will enough Republicans manage to hold their noses to tick Trump’s name? Politics has never been so exciting- or so dangerous.