The lady is a stinky tramp.
As I'm writing this I'm sat on the top deck of the number 57 bus, otherwise known as the travelling circus. About 5 minutes ago, as the 57 approached the bus stop where I was waiting, I braced myself for the usual scuffle in which everyone aims to be the first person on the bus. As is my custom, I maintained a slow - compared to the frontrunners - but determined pace and reflected on how insect-like human behaviour must appear to any celestial obvservers (well, if they actually exist, obviously).But today something was different. There was a tangible urgency in the drive to board the big red sardine can. Some people actually started running. Blindly bandying the word "parasitic" around in my head (bit harsh, I know) it was then I noticed the driver was actually telling people to hurry up "before they get on".
Who is this they, you might wonder.
Lepers?
Masked men with assault rifles?
No, he meant the two homeless women, one thirty-something, one impossibly small and frail pensioner, who were at the back of the que - crowd. As everybody crammed through the doors the thirty-something sped up and managed to squeeze through before the driver could shut them. "Get off!" he shouted, but the woman refused, choosing a seat for herself and sitting in defiance. As the other passengers all crammed back out the doors to escape the terrible aura of this woman, now joined by her gremlin-like companion, I sat thinking how sad this whole scene was from the safety of the top deck.
The problem, you see, was the stench. Rarely do I find opportunity to use the word "abominable". But as I walked back down the stairs to exit the stationery bus the dense wave of odour nearly made me sick. Abominable was the only word that would do.
Everybody had something to say of course, although only one man was saying the driver should just drive the bus whether people smell or not. A lone noble voice amidst a chorus of disgust aimed at the lepers. But was he right? This I can't be sure of, for all my sadness at watching the pack exclude these two poor souls, sneering, mocking them, I know I couldn't have sat anywhere on the bottom deck if they were on it. As always, having waited ages for the bus, two had come at once, and I blended myself into the pack once more. Having briefly gazed skywards, contemplating the Grand Scheme, I now looked down again, continuing on my path, insect-like.
posted by Phu @ 2:10 pm
2 Comments:
I used to work for National Express and once we had a man who got on the coach at London Victoria, but was put off at Milton Keynes by the driver because he was stinking the coach out. Staff at Milton Keynes let him use their bathroom and sprayed him with air freshner, but he still smelt too bad to be allowed to travel on another coach so he made his own way to wherever he was going. The man didn't seem too bothered at any point. He later wrote in just asking for a refund of his ticket, but made no complaint.
Another time a woman wrote in complaining that she and her young daughter had been refused travel because they were goths. The driver said he refused them travel because they were covered in poo. When asked about this, the woman said she had some poo on her, but disputed being covered in it.
There's more, but I'll spare you.
"The driver said he refused them travel because they were covered in poo. When asked about this, the woman said she had some poo on her, but disputed being covered in it."
lmao... that's great. I guess it boils down to your definition of 'covered'. Quite ambiguous, really.
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