This afternoon I pulled up in the bus station to load passengers for the 14:35 number 68 to Stockbridge and kept the doors closed for a few minutes while I updated the ticket machine with the route data. During this time I noticed a slightly unkempt gentleman on a bench near my bus, he had several plastic bags and there appeared to be liquid on the ground around the bags and he was double bagging another. I don’t know why but I suspected that he had alcohol. I opened the doors to load the bus and several people boarded and then the unkempt gentleman appeared a couple back in the queue, immediately there was a very strong smell of drink! I punched the return tickets of the two other passengers in front of him without giving them a second glance. My full attention was on the unkempt man. He then showed a 7 day Megarider Gold which allows travel anywhere on our network as often as you like. However, I did ask him where he was going ( the 14:35 number 68 is the only number 68 in the day which doesn’t go all the way through to Salisbury) and he said “Salisbury”. I explained that this bus only went as far as Stockbridge with the next Salisbury bus not being until 16:40, “and then you come back here”? he said. I could see his thought process that he’d do the round trip and then go to Salisbury. “Not exactly” I said “in Stockbridge the bus does a school run and then returns not in service to Winchester so you can’t do a round trip”. At which point he left the bus and I pulled away.

As I drove out of Winchester I was thinking things over and feeling quite smug about how I’d ‘lost’ a passenger who stank of drink without having to make any comment on it at all. In fact I was rather proud until ……………… aaargh ………… groan ……… and other odd sounds came from behind me. Definitely male but sounding like someone in child birth! I was a bit nonplussed by this. Then loud speech but I couldn’t understand what was being said. My first thoughts were that the passenger maybe had a mental problem but then I thought that they may be unwell so I pulled the bus over and went to them saying “Are you OK?” Then it hit me, the stink of alcohol! It was this guy which stank of alcohol and I’d not looked at him because I thought it was the other guy! He was incoherently drunk and clutching a bottle of vodka. He couldn’t tell me where he was going, and wouldn’t show me his ticket. He was totally obliterated. The problem was that if he didn’t get off I’d end up at the school to pick up the kids with a drunk on board. I called base and they told me to call the Police and ask for assistance in removing him. I did this and then had to wait 30 minutes for them to turn up. Eventually they persuaded him that he had to leave but he couldn’t actually walk so they ‘helped’ him off the bus.