Ticket problem in Brixham

On Friday this dear sweat lady boarded the bus with an other dear sweet old lady and two kindly gentlemen. She carefully handed me a ticket, helpfully proclaiming it to be a Weekly Group Ticket.(1) It was a weekly group ticket but it had expired the day before. I gently and sorrowfully explained to the poor lady that the ticket had run out and she would have to pay to travel. The silly old bat wasn’t having any of this. “It’s a weekly ticket, we can use it.” she proclaimed. “I bought it last Friday.” I again explained that it had yesterday’s date next to where it said “Expirery Date.” and this meant that she could not use it. By now the queue behind her stretched twice the length of the bus and my chances of leaving on time were vanishing faster than glaciers in Greenland. But still the witch didn’t seem to understand that the ticket was no good. So I tried some thing simple, I said,” You bought this ticket on Friday, that’s the first day, Saturday is the 2nd day and so on till we reached Thursday the 7th day. To day is the 8th day, so the ticket has run out.”
The Hag from Hell then tried a different track, “The driver I bought it from said I could use it for a week.” I agreed but told her the week was up, patiently counting on my fingers to try and prove to this Handmaiden from Hell that if she bought a weekly ticket last Friday then by this Friday it had expired, ceasing to perform any task other than as bookmark or as is more usual, litter. Still Satan’s mum refused to be persuaded, still insisting that a) invading Russia was a good idea and b) it was a weekly ticket and she had her companions could travel to Paignton.
I by now was conscious of growing unrest in the queue behind, something had to be do. “I am sorry dear lady,” I tried, “but the only way you are going to get to Paignton on this or an other bus is to give me £8.40.” (2)
Death stared me in the face! But the power of the Medusa must have waned over the centuries and I survived, just. Eventually she managed to locate her companions on the bus and explain the situation to then. She had better luck explaining than I had when I had tried to explain to her. One of her male companions took about 2.607 seconds to leave the bus, telling everyone within earshot ( most of Torbay and parts of Newton ) that I was trying to rob poor innocent people and he would sooner walk to Paignton. (3) After much scraping about in pockets and purses £6.30 was produced and slammed down on the cash tray. Then I could board the rest of the passengers, about 45 of them by now, and leave 10 mins late for Paignton, Torquay and Newton. So if you are waiting for a bus and it’s late and you ask the driver why it’s late, don’t be surprised when he says,
“Road works mate, sorry.”

Footnotes
(1) Weekly Group Tickets are a bargain, up to five people (or 4 people and a dog) can travel on all Stagecoach buses in Devon for a week. (4)
(2) £8.40 is the cost of 4 single fares from Brixham to Paignton, I wasn’t soliciting for a bribe.
(3) The walk to Paignton can be quite nice if you follow the coast, but it is 5 miles.
(4) A week is 7 days and the ticket starts on the day you buy it.

P.S. Due to a rise in the cost of fuel the above fares are now out of date until the cost of fuel returns to its former level. Some hope!

An RTA is now an RTC

Now and then a driver gets on the radio and warns other drivers that there has been an RTA some where, adding such information as, traffic movement, road blocked, emergency services on scene. RTA in this context means, or used to mean Road Traffic Accident.

It can also mean Road Traffic Act. This definition effects us mainly in the hours we drive. We are not allowed to drive for more than 5 1/2 hours without a 30 min break or we can drive for 8 1/2 hours but must take 45 mins break in that time and if we must take a 30 mins break before driving again. We are not allowed to drive more than 10 hours in a day and not allowed to drive more than 13 days without a day off. Actually day off is wrong. You can finish driving at say, 12:30 pm one day and start the next day at 12:31 pm. The 5 1/2 hour rule is the one we follow at work and it is just about as long as any one should drive. I did once drive for almost 7 hours but that was on the day of the Big Storm last Oct and it took 90 mins to get through the diversion when the sea front was closed. I also once drove for 39 days in a 40 day period a few years ago when we were desperately short of drivers during the height of summer but that is now only for the young, foolish and desperate for overtime people.

RTA used to stand for Road Traffic Accident. The problem with that is that there are almost no accidents on the roads these days. In fact there never have been very many.Not even back in the old days when Boadicea was a young girl and drove her parents mad when she keep wanting to borrow the chariote and keep crashing it into Romans. The person driving along a road with his window open and a bee flys in his car and stings him and he passes out from the shock and his car crashes in to a bus queue killing 20 people. Now that's an accident. The same person driving along at 50 mph in a 30 limit and 10 pints of Tennents Extra Strong Lager in side him and looses control of his car and hits the same bus queue with the same result is not.

So now we have RTC. Road Traffic Collision. Don't be in one. They are not nice.

Bus is Best!

A mad monk has travelled round the EU by bus; all 25 countries

Yellow Jacket, footnote.

Footnote 1.
Yesterday I told the depot manager I would wear the stupid yellow thing when ever the company said I must; i.e. in an bus running area. To night I fininshed work and drove a bus into the yard and parked it in the fuel line. I was ten feet from the door to the pay-in room (where I don't have to wear YJ) and I foregot YJ and got seen walking in bus running area by manager and got told of.

We have buses running late all over the place, people waiting far too long for a bus, we are driving on a route through a housing estate with blind bends and hills and right turns on to main roads that are imposible to take without ignoring the rule in the Highway Code that says, "never start a right turn you can not complete." and the company are so worried by the new political correctness of Helth and Safety that time is spent giving me a leture for crossing ten feet of bus running area where the only way a bus could have hit me is if some one was dangling one from a helicopter and dropped it on my head.

This is me, yellow jacket and all. Now for 7 years we walked round the bus park completely unharmed by the fact that we didn't have yellow jackets. Then health and safety turned up and overnight we all got yellow jackets to be worn in all areas where buses run. Now I have a problem with this. It takes the safety issue away from the driver of the vehicle and the pedestrian.

In the old days, before Health and Safety became the new Political Correctness, people walking in the bus park watched out for moving buses and kept out of their way. Drivers in the bus park, highly trained and skilled in handling large buses, kept watch for pedestrians and tried not to run them down. Now, the driver believes it is safe because the pedestrian will be wearing yellow and be easy to see and the pedestrian feels he is protected from harm by a millimeter thick piece of yellow cloth. We do have a speed limit in the bus park of 5 mph and buses make quiet a lot of noise so I would have to be blind and deaf to get hit by a bus driven by a blind bus driver. What ever I have said about the company doing daft things in the past I do not believe that they are mad enough to employ blind, deaf bus drivers.

My other problem with these jackets is that the company spent hundreds of thousands of pounds buying us all smart (their word) uniforms. Now you see drivers hanging around the office, in the canteen, driving their buses and for all I know sitting at home watching TV and going to bed wearing their yellow things and it does not improve our image one little bit.

So now you will see me as in photo when I have to according to company rules. But never driving a bus, in the canteen, down the pub, sitting in front of this computer or any of the other places I have mentioned.

I have suggested that I be the control in this experiment, if I don't wear a jacket and don't get run down then the company will know that the £100 000 they spent on all these jackets would have been wasted. If I do get run down then they could say, "Careless bastard."