OK, this happened a few days ago but who cares. I was in Teignmouth waiting time. If the traffic is light, which it has been until now we get 15 to 20 minutes in Teignmouth. Now we drop off at WH Smith’s and pick up a 100 yards away at the Sea View Diner. Neither bus stop is exactly big, certainly not big enough to leave a bus lying around for too long. Not unless Teignmouth coming to a halt is your idea of fun. However just round the corner on the sea front there are a couple of coach parking bays which I park on. Right, I do moan now and then about coaches parking on bus stops but I do watch out for any passing coaches that might want to park there, so far I haven't had to move yet. Anyway, the other day I went round and there was a number 2 also waiting time. The number 2 is one of ours and runs between Newton Abbot and Exeter.
On the sea front there is a row of Victorian Houses now done up into flats which overlook the sea. There is also a notice asking parked vehicles to switch of engines when parked. I am quiet fanatical about this. The moment I stop, the engine gets switched off, then the handbrake goes on. When it is time to go I start the engine and I am gone in a few seconds. Years ago I used to live overlooking a bus terminus and know exactly what it is like listening to a bus engine throbbing away in the background wondering when it will go and cursing the bus driver to the lowest reaches of hell. Bus engines are big and sound much louder on the outside of the bus than they do on the inside.
Guess what? The 2 driver had his engine running. And he had ten minutes before he went. Switch the fucking thing off. If it doesn't start it isn't your problem. Head office will get the complains. And anyway this number two was fairly new, it will start. Trust me on this. I'm a bus driver.
So I had a few minutes and went to talk to the driver, no sorry, not to have a go at him for being an audio polluter, but just a chat. Then a lady who lived in one of the flats appeared, approached the other driver and said, "Have you any idea what it is like..................". I missed the rest of the sentence, guessing it was to do with the engine running. An other driver of a passing bus had called me over. He wanted to know if I had any idea where the 'Promotion 2' button was on the new ticket machine. As it happened we don't use this button in Torquay but it is on the machine, not sure why, and I knew where it was. By the time I had told him the lady had finished her conversation with the other number 2 driver and was heading, wait for it, to the nearby litter bin into which she dumped a bag of rubbish she had brought out from her flat. Just in case you didn't know dumping private household rubbish in a public litter bin is illegal and councils tend to get dead upset if they catch you doing it.
She wasn't bothered by the engine noise either. She was upset that our buses were blocking her view of the sea. It’s only water for crying out loud, get a telly, much more interesting.
