Sinner On a Bus!

I have already explained some months ago that I have a tendency to eavesdrop.

Sometimes it is easier than you would expect.

Sometimes the conversations are shouted across crowded rooms or busy streets.

On this occasion it was shouted across the aisle of the bus.

It went ...

"H'lo Dai! How're you? Haven't seen you for ages."

" 'm'all right Will! Doing well ... doing well! As well as can be expected anyway".

"What's happened then Dai? You're missus caught you womanising again?"

"No, no!" answered Dai. "The wife, see. Taken ill, she was. Rushed into hospital on Christmas Eve ... died Boxing day".

"Oh No!" said Will. "That's awful! I'm so sorry!"

"Oh she went peaceful ... in her sleep ... so she didn't suffer".

"Must have been hard for you" said Will.

"It was, it was. But I believe, you see, like, so I managed to cope because God was with me".

"God got me through something similar" said Will.

"Oh I'm sorry!" said Dai. "Did you lose someone close?"

"No!" came back Will. "I lost my lottery ticket! I had a £150 winnings on it and I lost it, but God got me through it!"

A stunned Dai answered "But that's nothing like the same, like, is it?"

"Near enough" answered Will. "Near enough!"

"Yer a sinner, Will Williams! Yer a sinner!" snapped Dai as he made to get off the bus.

Southern Comfort

Yesterdays outing took me to a Bev's Café in Pontypridd.

I ordered my 'usual' and sat myself at the table by the café's expansive window. As I shuffled myself back and forwards, getting my backside comfortable, a brown leather two-seater sofa floated by the window.

Well, technically it didn't float, it was actually carried by two middle aged men; their faces bright red and betraying their jovial demeanour by quite clearly stating "F*** this is heavy! But I'll be damned if I'm going to ask him if we set it down for a moment".

The bell over the café's door tinkled as I watched the two men and their cargo disappearing down the road and an elderly gentleman entered.

"Ungfff!" he said as he closed the door behind him.

"Ungfff! Ungfff! Ungfff!"

Every step he took was accompanied by an "Ungfff!".

His legs were bowed and bent and he leant heavily on a walking stick.

He ungfff'd his way to the counter and ordered a cup of tea and a full English breakfast, turned, then ungfff'd his way to a table.

He took off his coat but for several minutes he just stood in front of the table.

Ha-ffffffffffft

Ha-ffffffffffft

Ha-ffffffffffft

Ha-ffffffffffft

Ha-ffffffffffft

The strange noise emanating from the old man caused some interest and nearly all of the café's patrons to turn and look.

He then placed a rubber ring onto the chair and ...

"Ungfff!"

... sat down.

There was a squeak followed by a ripple of laughter.

"You've got to look after your piles, isn't it! Got to be having some comfort, see! " he said in a broad valley's accent.

Just then the afore mentioned sofa drifted back in the direction from whence it had previously come.
Raised voices could be heard as the two red faced men, now obviously struggling, plodded past.

"The wrong shop!" said one. "The wrong bloody charity shop! D'you know how far we've carried this damned thing?"

"All right! All right! Don't go on about it, man! We just have to ..."

Their voices trailed off as they rounded the corner.

Love Isn't A Kiss. Love Is Holding On!

It was fifteen minutes late.

The bus!  It was fifteen minutes late.

By the time we reached the halfway point - where the new driver boards - we were twenty five minutes late.

Just another day on the bus, you might think, but no! Today we were treated with a novice driver's on his first solo outing.  Oh, the ride was smooth, carried out with precision and, dare I say it, a certain style (he sang the My Way as he drove), but he was so slow!

The new driver; the one that got on at the halfway point, (a grizzled, silver-haired man-mountain) did not look impressed as he took control of the bus.

We flew through the narrow streets of Porth, the bus swaying, swerving and skidding like a Formula1 racing car (that'll be an Indy 500 car for OTPD's*), finally reaching our destination (Pontypridd) a mere seven minutes behind schedule.

You should have seen the faces of those folks at bus-stops he didn't bother to stop at.

During the journey ... the first and more relaxing part ... I did manage an observation or two.

Firstly, there was the pimply-faced youth listening to his i-pod.

He wore shorts and, as the driver kept forgetting to close the door, he must have been freezing as the blast of cold air blew straight up to the back of the bus (where we sat) turning it into a mini, mobile Siberia.  There was a quiet tinkling, an occasional clang and the sound of tiny, squeaky voices which led  me to believe that a miniature stepladder had found it's way into his scrotum and two very cold testicles were attempting to evacuate the scrotum for the warmth of the place from whence they came.

Next there was the huge, dark-haired harridan with hooves that stamped her way up the aisle and sat just in front of us. I say 'hooves' because that's how it seemed. Her calf-length boots were both unzipped and folded down and forward thus covering her feet making them look like hooves. She was a big woman and the word 'buffalo' sprung to mind.  She talked to herself. She recited her shopping list aloud, sometimes mentally adding an item with a "Oh, yes! I could do with some of those and maybe a ...".

Anyway, at her stop, as she got up from her seat, she managed to drop one of her plastic bags, of which she had several, into the aisle.
As she bent to retrieve it, I swear to God I heard the millions of atoms that made up the material of her leggings clearly scream "Oh No! Not again!" as they struggled to contain her oversized and gelatinous buttocks. The black material of her leggings was stretched to the extreme, revealing the pink colour of her expansive underwear.

It was not a sight that I would care to witness again!  I'm pretty sure I'm going to need therapy for post traumatic stress!

Thirdly, on the second half of our journey, which I almost described as 'hair-raising' (but didn't, seeing as I'm still bald, that would have been untrue. And I always tell the truth!), was memorable due to a young couple who were standing (the bus was full at this time) in the space reserved for wheelchairs.  They were all over each other and were seemingly deeply in love.

Then it all went pear shaped!

He was leaning against the window.
She stood facing him, her back to the aisle, and he had his arms around her waist.
They were in the process of sucking each others faces from their heads.
The bus pulled away from a bus-stop and into main stream traffic.
The driver accelerated, only to be thwarted by someone pulling out in front of him and taking his priority.
The driver slams on the brakes.
We all shoot forward.
Our two love-puppies also shoot forward.
The young man lets go of his girl friend's waist and grabs a hand rail.
There is a sound.
"Thwupppp"!
Their lips are pulled apart.    
She shoots sideways sown the aisle screaming.
He watches, as we all do.
She, now two rows further forward, grabs a hand rail.
She turns and falls backwards over the lap of a somewhat surprised, but now very happy, old man.
He tries to help her up.
She screamed again and uttered a series of expletives punctuated by "perv" and "dirty old man".
We all laugh.
She stamps back to her boyfriend, demands to know why he let go of her, then she punches him in the shoulder before he can reply.

Everyone on the bus was sniggering.  It was hardly surprising when they got off at the next stop.






* OTPD = Over The Pond Dwellers

10 Observations Made On The #130 Bus to Pontypridd*

1. Unsupervised children lick windows.
   
2. More than one fat person waddling up the aisle make the bus rock sufficiently to cause seasickness.
   
3. The loudest person on the bus always sits next to me.
   
4. There is always chewing-gum stuck to the seat I sit on.
   
5. There is always one person on the bus that needs the toilet and lets everyone know what'll happen if they don't go soon.
   
6. When two buses park opposite each other, someone always starts a silent conversation with a passenger they know on the other bus (mostly only women do this as 'womanly secrets' are quite often passed back and forth using the 'lip reading' method of conversation to avoid husbands from hearing anything).
   
7. Bus drivers stop at least 3 metres past the point at which passengers are supposed to mount the bus.
   
8. Bus drivers will quite often stop at the wrong side of the bus stop, thus causing the waiting passengers-to-be to troop to the other end, only to have the bus driver correct his error and move to the proper boarding point and, seeing no one waiting, he will promptly drive off before they can troop back.
   
9. The weirdest passengers ALL know each other and hold conversations that are shouted, not spoken.
   
10. If you don't shift your arse down that aisle when you reach your stop, don't expect the driver to react to your frantic cries for him to wait a moment.

*    These observations were made over a number of weeks.  I would hate to be responsible putting anyone off travelling    
            on one of our wonderful buses.   

Another Day, Another Bus!

Today I would like to sing the praises of the bus drivers of South Wales, as dedicated and daring a bunch (insert the correct group noun for bus drivers if you know it) of rapscallions you could ever have the pleasure of crossing paths with.

Let me take you through today's journey.

The bus arrived at five past ten this morning.  A full five minutes early!  We boarded, flashing our bus passes as we did so, then proceeded to sit on the bus for ten minutes whilst the driver ate a sandwich and poured tea from a flask. At a quarter past ten he drove on. Now we were running a full five minutes late!

Almost immediately the bus was directed towards the narrow streets of Tonypandy where he jinked and jived that bus this way and that to a chorus of Whoa's and Phew's from the passengers.

To his credit, and he would no doubt argue it was due to his great skill, no wing mirror's were clipped and no pedestrians were squished on our way to the main bus stop of the town.

Now the towns of the welsh valleys date back to a time when a persons only means of transport were his/her feet or pony and trap.  They were never planned and built without thought for modern forms of mass transport and therefore you will quite often find the front doors of the terraced houses are very near to the road. As almost every family now has a car the parking in those towns is strictly limited and, in quite a few places, illegal so, as you can imagine, driving a bus through them is not an easy affair.

There were numerous stops along the route but the one that sticks in my mind was in the town of Porth, where   we parked up in the bus depot and our driver left us.  For approximately ten minutes we sat there with nothing to do but idly peruse the occupants of the bus next to us and was in a similar, driver-less predicament.

I tried hard not to let my eyes linger too long on the red hot blonde beauty on the other bus but, to my shame,I did check her out several times. Two seats in front of this beauty I saw a child of perhaps 5 or six doing his best to keep the bus he was on tidy and clean by slowly licking the inside of the window. He stopped occasionally to poke his tongue out at me.

When our new driver arrived he immediately, and much to our annoyance, refrained from boarding and joined a group of his colleagues to express hearty and manly greetings and exchange pleasantries of, I presume, bus driver-ly nature.

When he finally did take his place behind the wheel and started the engine we were, by my watch, running fifteen minutes late and passenger tempers were beginning to fray.

This is when a bus drivers wicked sense of humour comes into play.  You see, in order to get himself, his bus and indeed us, back on schedule we were treated to not one, but two, demonstrations of bus driver mean bastard-ness of the highest order.

This is what happened:

• He deliberately pulled up at a stop at the wrong end of the bus shelter
• Realising this, the passengers troop to the back of the shelter in order to board
• On seeing that the would-be passengers were almost at the door of the bus, the driver pulled forward to the correct boarding point.
• The would-be passengers turn, complaining, and troop back to the front of the shelter.
• The bus driver, seeing no one at the correct boarding point pulls out and back into traffic, leaving a gaggle of irate would-be's waving there arms and throwing umbrella's after the bus.

This happened, as I said, twice thus shaving at least ten minutes from our journey time.

Later, just before we reached our destination (Pontypridd), there was another incident which raised eyebrows and infuriated would-be passengers.  At a bus stop stood six or seven people, several of whom stuck out their arms to alert our driver to their presence.

Did he stop at the right place?

No!

He drove at least twenty metres passed the stop and parked beside three men in florescent jackets. The men were obviously fellow bus drivers, and colleagues of our driver, exercising their right to free bus travel.

Once again a stream of would-be passengers jogged, waddled and hobbled towards the doors of the bus but our bus driver, who seemed totally devoid of any kind of Christmas spirit, had other ideas and pulled back onto the road.

We got off the bus at the next stop, but I couldn't help wondering if our driver would continue on his one man mission to selflessly piss-off any and all passengers during the rest of his trip to his final destination of Caerphilly.

Remember That £25 Fine?

I paid it yesterday!

I went all the way to Pontypridd and paid it in person.

And it was the biggest mistake I've made, well ... since the last big mistake that I made.

As I walked back to my car after leaving some of my hard-earned cash behind, I was spotted by load of seagulls.

And I do mean 'SPOTTED'!

Now I ask  you, can my luck get any worse?

And The World Turns

So, as the title says, the World turns.

And the bad things just keep on coming.

I have never been what you might call 'well off'.  Money and I do not make good bed fellows!
As soon as it comes, the World contrives to make it go away again.

Take, for instance, my car ... someone, please take it!!!

Last week not one ... not two ... but ALL FOUR spark plugs decided to foul up causing my car to complain bitterly and roll to a stop uttering phutt-phutt noises, which I am sure is car-speak for "Not another inch you bastard"!  OK, so it was fixable, but it cost me quite a bit of money.

Some weeks prior, for some inexplicable reason, most of my clients decided to cancel their calls for a two week period. This left me with a mere 19 hours a week of work. As I am paid by the hour, you can guess how much that dented my wallet.


On Saturday the glass fell out of the right-hand wing mirror of my car.  No, it didn't break! I managed to catch it! NO mean feat when you are travelling at 70 MPH.  With the aid of some (fortunately) handy sticky tape, I was able to secure it again.

That same day, I learned just how deceitful my fellow man could be.  I picked up a client who I was to take to a rugby match (Pontypridd vs Bedwas).  When I arrived on the car park opposite the stadium, I made for the ticket machine (so I could park legally) and was told by a number of people that parking on match days was free.  So, like and idiot, I believed them only to return to my car after the match and find a £50 parking fine stuck to my windscreen.

Bummer, right?

But the hammer came when the vet confirmed that my boy Sym's cancer has returned.

Yes, the World just keeps on turning ... and shit happens!