A Few Light Showers May Reach Parts of the South West

Half nine in Teignmouth, the deckchairs already set up for the expected hoards on a beautiful sunny day. Shame the heavens opened at lunch time.

Later, there I was on the Strand picking passengers up for Babbacombe and Marychurch. I was beginning to relax, two thirds of the way through the duty. Then the problem turned up. We the drivers have had a steep learning curve with the new ticket machines but the passengers have also had to learn something new about the machines. The old Wayfarer machines had a system that meant the ticket had to be pulled from the machine. There was a V shaped knife inside the machine and when the ticket was given a gentle pull it cut a similar shaped tear in the ticket. So our customers have spent the last 20 years pulling the ticket, sometimes violently from the machine. The new machines have done away with this need for violence on the bus platform in that they actually cut the ticket once it is printed. So for the last two weeks we have been pressing the issue button and saying, "Wait for it to Cut." It only takes a second but some people can't wait and pull the ticket, sometimes violently. One such act of violence perpetrate on my poor ticket machine didn't just jam the ticket roll, it did sometime to the little knife that cuts the paper. I think it fell out. Anyway the tickets weren't being cut and I ended up using emergency tickets. It is much slower issuing emergency tickets and quiet a few people spent an extra minute or two standing in the rain waiting to get on the bus because of this.

Please be gentle with our ticket machines, they are after all, young and inexperienced.

I saw an item on the news yesterday, the Government wants to make enterance to swimming pools free. I hope they fund this scheme a lot better than the entrance to buses for free or there won't be a swimming pool left in the country by the time of the London Olympics.

Free beer for the over sixties, now that would be an idea Mr Brown.