First Day Back

Sunday morning, bright and early and back to work after two weeks holiday. Because it is early I get to take a bus out of the park which means I have to do a bus inspection and fill in the First User on the defect card. Part of the inspection means checking the water in the radiator. For this we have half a dozen watering cans lying a round the park and the only one I could find had been run over by a bus and was a bit squashed. So I put the defect card on the ground while I filled the radiator and drove off with it still on the ground. Fortunately I had a spare in my bag so when I realized I didn't have a defect card I able to fill in the spare card. Then to my first customer. He wanted a ticket for £1.70 but only had £1.65. Five pence down and I have only been out 10 minutes. A bit further down the road an other driver got on the radio to report that someone had left her handbag on the bus at the Grand Hotel. Nice start to some one's day. Ten minutes later the next bus arrived at the Grand and the young lady without her handbag asked the driver how she went about getting her handbag back. He radioed the driver who had reported the lost handbag and said see was going up Fleet Walk and would be back at the Grand in 2 hours. As i was going down Fleet Walk at the time I got on the radio and told the driver still at the Grand to tell the young lady here handbag would be at the Grand in 10 minutes. Then I flagged down the driver with the handbag and retrieved it from her. So from leaving her handbag on the bus to getting it back took 25 minutes instead of two hours. That's service for you.

While I was away the was a little bit of trouble on Paignton Bus Station with FirstBus staff handing out flyers stating that FirstBus were cheaper between Torquay and Paignton, which is true but not much use if you want to go onto Brixham. Anyway the Police were called and thousands were arrested in the riots that followed. (No, sorry that's not true. I must have been reading the wrong page in the news paper) No arrests were made and a Police spokesman said, "We gave advice and the situation calmed down quickly."
One thing I did notice as I drove along is that FirstBus have put their timetable on all the bus stops between Torquay and Paignton, some thing the never bothered with before. I also notice that there are slightly bigger that the Stagecoach time tables (which have always been there). This is the sort of thing that can completely destroy peace conferences."Why is your flag bigger than ours. This is an insult to the Democratic Peoples republic of Stagecoach Devon." says the leader of the peace delegation before storming out and arming the nuclear warheads. Lets hope it doesn't get to that. By the way, our fares to Plymouth are cheaper the FirstBus. Four quid return. You don't get better than that.

The bus above is not in any war, it just goes every hour for €1.25 to Andorra la Vella 8 km away from St Julia. The top picture is Andorra la Vella, capital town of Andorra. Nice place.