A short report from the top deck, where everyone is an expert on a road they will never use.
BRIXTON, England (The London Prat) – There is a particular kind of person who gets on a London bus and immediately tells you what is wrong with London. Today that person was me, and I did it entirely to myself, from the front seat on the top deck of the 345, where I had gone in the hope of seeing something other than my own opinions.
First stop: the front seat
I take the front seat upstairs whenever I am allowed, because it is the only seat in the city that comes with a view and a sense of imminent danger. The driver below me, whom I will never meet, makes a series of decisions about a lamp post that I would not have the courage to make about a sandwich. I held on to the rail and watched a pigeon walk down the middle of the road as if it had paid for the lane.
I was on my way to the market to buy yams, and then to a friend’s flat, and then home on the 436 if the universe was feeling generous. I have a theory that every London journey has exactly three chapters: the hopeful one, the sweaty one and the one where you stand next to a man eating chips. I was still in chapter one.
Second stop: Oxford Street without the buses
The talk on the top deck was of Oxford Street, which, as Euronews reported, has barred cars, buses and bicycles from about a kilometre of its length, between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street. It is the first phase of a redevelopment with trees, seating and two new public squares. The mayor, Sadiq Khan, called it a “momentous day for London” and said it is “a new era”. The street still gets about half a million visitors a day, and this year’s Christmas lights have a Harry Potter theme.
I think it is a fine idea, and I would like to say so before anyone writes in. A street made of people instead of engines is a street where you can finally hear the shop doors. A woman in the seat behind me disagreed. She said that she had only ever used Oxford Street as a place to be on a bus, and that now she would have to be on a bus somewhere else. I told her that was the whole point of a city: you can always be on a bus somewhere else.
The ianVisits round-up later that day added that transaction value on the street was up 28 percent year on year in the first week, a figure it credits to a trade publication. I find this reassuring in the way a gym receipt is reassuring. Money has been spent, so something must have changed. I did not spend any of it, but I was proud of the people who did.
Third stop: the strikes, in advance
The bad news came from a man holding his phone out like a torch. ianVisits reports a new series of Tube strikes, run by the RMT, whose general secretary is Eddie Dempsey, over TfL’s plans to compress the driver working week into four days. The union says the scheme would strip existing protections from drivers whether they work four or five days, and the article notes that the other drivers’ union, Aslef, has accepted the roster changes. Each strike is 24 hours starting at noon, and the first is on a Thursday at the end of this month, with further dates through the winter into the new year.
Everyone on the bus had a view. A teenager said it was fine because he would walk. A retired gentleman said that in his day the trains ran on time because nobody asked them anything. A woman in a green coat pointed out that the Circle, Piccadilly and parts of the Metropolitan and Central lines are likely to have no service, and that this was exactly the sort of detail the Tube likes to save for the end of the sentence. I did not take sides in the dispute, because it is a dispute between people who understand rosters and I only understand queues.
I will say that the great thing about being a bus person is that you are impervious to all of this. A Tube strike is, for me, a rumour about another world. I look at it the way I once looked at a ship in a harbour: interesting, loud and not mine. My plates of meat are the one form of transport the unions cannot call out, and for anyone who wants to translate that sentence, there is a guide to Cockney rhyming slang.
A short detour through Nairobi
A friend on the top deck had her phone open on a fuel story from Kenya. Tech-ish reported that the energy regulator’s latest review, covering the month to mid-November, puts super petrol in Nairobi at 226.96 shillings a litre, up 12.93, with diesel at 227.76 and kerosene up 28.49. It blamed higher import costs, and said the regulator raised kerosene by more than costs alone would explain, to narrow a gap with diesel that can encourage adulteration. The next review is due by the middle of the month.
I read it aloud because it is a perfect piece of bureaucratic prose: a price goes up, the regulator explains the price, and the explanation is the more interesting part. I told my friend it was the sort of story a bus driver would love, because every number is a hill. She said that the thing she loves about fuel is that it always goes up on the day you need it. I said we should start a committee, and that the committee should be in charge of other committees.
Last stop: the terminus
I got off one stop early, as I always do, to pretend I had planned it. The yams were cheaper than I deserved. A stallholder asked whether I was well, and I said yes, and he gave me a free onion, which is the only form of welfare I have ever applied for and been granted.
On the way back I read a headline on a farm website about a company that is hiring 400 people while its biggest customer goes broke. That is the kind of confidence I want from the transport network. I want a timetable that says “we are hiring” in the face of all evidence. Failing that, I will settle for a bus that turns up at the same moment as the other bus.
It also struck me that a street without buses sounds, on first hearing, like a joke from a newspaper that jokes for a living. It is not. For that reason I keep a copy of a handy UK checklist for sorting jokes from headlines in my bag, next to the onion, and I recommend it to anyone who rides a bus and believes everything on their phone.
Notes from the other buses, and the odd Tube I am forced onto, are kept at more of my daily notes at The London Prat. I am told the 436 is coming. I have been told that for twenty minutes.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/