Always be the last off the bus, remember that, it has served me well.
Many years ago when I left school and started work I used to walk a lot. I walked to work, I walked to town during dinner breaks and walked home at night. These cars were a familiar sight on the roads, their history is an incredibly rich one and was a solution the government decided on to give mobility back to all the injured servicemen from World War II. They were meant for one and the inside resembled the handlebars of a motorbike stuffed in a telephone box, they cornered in a wide arc to stop rolling but could get up to some incredible speeds.
How do I know this? Well, I was unfortunate enough to be working with an individual that was not disabled but then again didn't have a driving licence only a motor bike licence hence he had one as a runabout. It never dawned on him as he pulled up along side me one Autumn morning that offering a lift was a little rash.
Still, with the stupidity of youth I climbed in. I say climbed in, it was more like playing sardines. I opened the door and look in disdain, five inches were left on the single seat, how on earth was I going to fit.
'Come on, I'll budge up.' and he did giving me the luxury of six inches to fit my amble bottom in. It was a squeeze, you know when you see stupid attempts at how many people you can fit in a telephone box well it was that, from outside it must have looked like a car full of badly dressed flesh for I was wearing cords and he had a brown suit on. Come to think of it there was a couple of other chaps in the office with weird cars, one of them attended big parties on family estates at the weekend but drove to work in a Russian car with two gears, cinema seats for extra comfort and used the handbrake as the main brake, I kid you not. He did upgrade it later to a Lada which had the luxury of indicators but stuck with the habit of signalling with his hands.
Anyway, if you were walking down that road around '84 you would have seen two blokes crammed in a small three wheeled metal box squashed up against the doors, faces inches from the windscreen, sorry if we startled you. Trundling away we approach our first problem, how to turn corners. It was too cramped for him to reach over properly without being sued to steer so he came up with the unique solution of us having our own side of the steering handlebars. Basically if we wanted to go left I pulled and breathed in if we wanted right he pulled and did the same a sort of driving rowing excercise. As you can see health, safety, Highway Code and any other law you would like to throw at it went out of the window.
It got more daring as we went faster, hit anything potholey and we bounced into the roof to compress our spines, took a corner rakishly and alley oop, two wheels bond style. Braking was fun, I just love pressing my face at 30mph against angled glass whilst the single front wheel ground into the carriage way leaving a waving squiggle of rubber behind us. So with that we swerved and wound our way down straight roads and bounced off the kerbs on curved ones. Parking was a pain, we had to get out and lift it when he wanted to reverse. I arrived to work five minutes faster but developed a fine streak of grey hair. The same day I went out with another guy in the office who drove at high speed everywhere and braked Sweeny style, I had all on stopping him shouting 'Shut it, you slag!' At every opportunity. Yes, he had a potty mouth too. Anyway he Sweenied to a halt a little too quickly and a car thudded in to the back of ours turning my neck into a rubber band. This was days before whiplash injuries so I just wore stiff polo necks for the next six months. Climbing out of the car Mr Potty Mouth had a field day, I just curled up in the footwell and wept.
It's shortly after this that I decided to get my own transport and bought myself a push bike. I was knocked off weeks later when a disqalified motorist didn't see me but decided I needed to perform a forward somersault over his bonnet. He drove off leaving me and my bent bike in a bleeding muddled mess, I had a bang to the head but I'm alright sausages and trifle.
Looking back it was quite an lively few months in '84, a vintage year for transport related failures. I eventually gave in and started to get the bus, I must be one of the only people to witness a horror hurl. Riding upstairs was always exciting but sit at the back on the top deck sometime near Christmas when you have had rather a lot to drink and you get bounced about an awful lot, gradually you feel like a shaken pop bottle and something's got to give. Fortunately for me I was not that person, I was sat a few seats ahead but was well aware of the grunts and groans emitting from behind.
My stop came up and I rose, so did the bouncy groaner from the back seat, my spider sense tingled and I paused just long enough for him to stumble by. I didn't fancy him falling on me as he climbed down the narrow stairs. There were quite a number of people getting off so the queue was building from below and about three people were on the stairs when he reached the top and let it all go.
It sounded like somebody had dropped a soggy blamange. Lets just say that I never want to pick my way down that staircase ever again, it was like the ill persons version of the Tunnel Of Love. Dark, slippy with a smell that curled your toes. How they got it out of their hair, clothes and carrier bags I'll never know. Hope they had plenty of sand on board because as I strode away I heard a chorus of synchronised sympathy hurling. Merry Christmas indeed.
And that is why I will always be the last off the bus.
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