Art on the buses

My local bus the E3 supposedly has a frequency of between 6-8 minutes. Now, I gave up on most of the London buses years ago in favour of the tube. Not that there haven't been improvements then and now. Our Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is the man you hate to love and love to hate. For those overseas readers (for whom this site is really intended), he was the thorn in Thatcher's side doing the same job back when. 'Red Ken' as he was known. Only, Londoners couldn't think of or offer anyone else to vote for under new Labour so back he conquered. Not that Blair likes him much. And Ken's certainly not prepared to be his scapegoat. He's just returned from a much criticised trip to Cuba, and an aborted one to Venezuela, to negotiate a cheap oil deal for London's buses. At £34,000, it hasn't gone down at all well amongst the city's populace.

But the 30-60 minute tube ride as opposed to the two hour bus trip into Central London always wins. In summer, the buses have no air conditioning so your sweat pours down the handrails. And in winter, the idea of opening a window to alleviate the stale air seems totally alien to most commuters. The one good thing I discovered was free, legal, non-destructive political graffiti. Choose your condensationed window carefully, particularly the big ones at the front upstairs, and you could reach a wide viewing public. I became the Jenny Holzer of socialist saliva. Or maybe it was more Richard Long. Anyway, back to the E3.

It takes a lot for me to go the doctor but the other day my stomach was in revolution. The short walk to the surgery was difficult so I braved the bus stop. From 9.30am until 10.00am I fumed as four buses went the other way and none mine. Good thing I wasn't elderly or chronically infirm and this was my daily experience. A Colombian graduate student rather dismissed my dismay the other night by saying that London was a lot better than Colombia. At least there is a means of public transport, albeit problematic and sometimes infrequent, that conveys you to your door at most times of day, she said fixing me with her gaze. Dare I say it, but I think most of the immigrants here wouldn't mind if the transport were horse drawn so grateful are they to have escaped the situation in their native lands and earn a decent living. Since the privatisation of public transport, a myriad of companies run both the bus and tube. I'm not a transport expert, but don't you think parts and maintenance would be cheaper and easier if there was more uniformity and they learnt joined up writing!

Now, have I told you about the time I caught the last Victoria line train home and the staff of this particular station had forgotten about it, gone home, and we all had to break out..................


P.S. (Can such a thing as a P.S. exist within the semantics of a blog?)

Late last cold wet Sunday night, I saw a couple desperately flagging down the E3 bus 100 meters after its stop. Well, the driver did stop. Wish I'd had the same experiences.....