A sorry tale

Ticket prices are based on fare stages. A fare stage may be a single bus stop or several sequential stops can be in the same fare stage. As the driver moves along the route they should increment the ticket machine each time they enter a new fare stage. When a passenger gets on and asks for a ticket to ‘x’ the driver taps in the fare stage number for ‘x’ and the ticket machine displays the cost from the curent fare stage to the requested fare stage. This works 99% of the time but just occasionally the driver forgets to update the ticket machine as the bus enters a new fare stage and then quotes the passenger for their destnation from a start point behind the bus. Just like I did this morning and charged £1.70 instead of the correct fare which should have been £1.20 I realised my error when the second boarding passenger asked for the same destination, I corrected the machine and asked for the correct fare which was paid. As I turned toward the passengers to ask for the previous passenger to come and see me the ‘young lady’ rushed up the bus shouting that I’d overcharged her and using language which made Gordon Ramsay’s language sound more like Buckingham Palace tea party language! I asked to her to calm down and said I wanted to explain something – I was trying to say “Sorry, I made a mistake with your ticket”. “I want to cancel your ticket and give you another plus refund the overcharge”. But no, she increased the volume even more. To be frank I lost it :-( When she finally ran out of breath I told her that I’d been intending to apologise and to refund her 50p but now I wouldn’t! “If you want your refund I suggest you visit the bus station and ask for it there, don’t forget to tell them why the driver wouldn’t do it”! At this point I was called a f**** c*** w**** just for starters.

I’m not pleased with myself for doing this but just sometimes I find it impossible to let it all wash over me :-(

The real loser in all of this is not the ‘young lady’, not me, but someone I didn’t mention. The ‘young lady’ had what appeared to be a daughter with her. A little girl of about 4 years who just stood by her Mum and heard the uncouth language come out of Mother’s mouth. How will she grow up? Will she learn/think/assume that’s the way to deal with things? I now regret saying what I did for the child’s sake. I wish I’d just handed over the 50p and said nothing whatsoever.

Today

I’ve mentioned before that I now drive what is predominately a rural route – Winchester to Salisbury in a very wobbly line. Today I was flagged down by an elderly lady who was not at a bus stop, this is not in itself unusual because on a route like this you stop where people want rather than where the bus stop pole is planted! However, she didn’t come onto the bus but came round to my driver’s side window, I opened the window and she held out an envelope (looked like a Christmas card). ” Would you please give this to the lady with a shopping trolley who gets on at xxxxx”? “No problem” I said knowing exactly who she meant. A few miles on I came to xxxx and there was the lady with her shopping trolley ready to receive her card! All I need now is receive the paltry sum a bus driver is paid PLUS a postman’s wages, then I should be better off.

The weekend

We’ve just got back from a couple of nights away in our caravan. We stayed at Brokerswood Country Park and were very impressed with it. Infact, it was so nice that before leaving we booked to stay there for Easter!

We bought the caravan earlier this year so this was our first winter trip in it. The caravan is well insulated and with a full heating system we were very comforable in it. The only problem was that we had no water this morning because the water tank outside the caravan had frozen! This is how our world looked we woke up this morning.

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Cathy Buckle’s letter from Zimbabwe

This is Cathy Buckle’s letter of last weekend. In it she writes “From all over the country there are first hand reports of people barely surviving by eating roots, wild berries, beetles and insects”. Sadly, I can confirm this. Essy’s Mum has had to resort to pounding her planting seeds in a pestle and mortar to try and make whatever porridge she could of it. I wrote on Monday about the problems of trying to get US$ to her. Well, I managed it by paying someone in Harare to deliver them to her directly. It was expensive but at least she’ll eat.

Dear Family and Friends,
Within half a kilometre of a main army barracks and in view of a steady stream of traffic and hundreds of people, a man lay next to a main road leading to the Harare airport this week. Barefoot, painfully thin and with thick, unkempt hair the man lay unmoving on the verge, his feet protruding into the busy road. Standing on the opposite side of the road four men in army camouflage stood hitch- hiking, choosing not to see the man lying a few steps away from them. Is this what Zimbabwean authorities did not want the former UN Secretary General and former US President to see on a planned 2 day humanitarian assessment visit? Is this why these two respected Elders were denied visas to enter Zimbabwe?

Outside banks, building societies and post offices the crowds of people trying to withdraw their own money have grown to multiple thousands. Many people have resorted to sleeping outside the banks in order to be near the front of the queues where they can only withdraw five hundred thousand dollars a day – enough to buy one mouthful of a single cornish pasty being sold at a local bakery this week. Two and a half million dollars was the price tag for this simple take away snack – five days of queuing at the bank to buy one meal for one person. Is this what the authorities in Zimbabwe did not want Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter to see? Is this why they were denied visas to enter Zimbabwe?

On a seventy kilometre stretch of road through what used to be prime agricultural land on the way to the capital city, there is silence and desolation as roadside farms lie unploughed and unplanted while the country remains barren of seed and fertilizer. Even as the rains fall on the land and the ground turns springy underfoot, the weeds are sprouting but not the food. The lushest crop I saw in 70 kilometres was grass being carefully manicured on a golf course. Is this what the authorities did not want Mr Annan and Mr Carter to see and why they were denied visas?

In supermarkets, the majority of which are not allowed to trade in US dollars, the shelves are empty. There are no staple goods, no dairy products, no confectionary, no fast foods, no tinned or bottled products, nothing to eat at all. From all over the country there are first hand reports of people barely surviving by eating roots, wild berries, beetles and insects. Is this what the world’s respected Elders were not supposed to see and why they were denied visas to come into Zimbabwe?

Hospitals without disposable gloves, medicines, drips, bandages or disinfectant. Nurses who cannot afford to come to work. Toilets and taps without water. A growing cholera outbreak in all areas of the country with 300 people already dead. Raw sewage flowing in the streets of high density areas. Dustbins which have not been collected in urban residential suburbs since July in my home town. Men, women and children collecting water in bowls and buckets from swampy streams and murky pools. No soap to buy in the shops so no chance of preventing the spread of cholera by washing your hands with soap and water. Is this what Mr Annan, Mr Carter and Mrs Machel might have seen had they been granted visas to see for themselves the humanitarian catastrophe now engulfing Zimbabwe?

We hope that the Elders will not give up on Zimbabwe, even though there is no welcome mat at our doorstep.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Filming is now over

The BBC has departed and peace has descended upon our road. On the penultimate day of filming I was on a rest day and my car was still clamped, I needed to pay a cheque in at the bank and to do some supermarket shopping. Nothing for it but to take a bike, which I did and slipped off without them noticing because I’m sick and tired of having a camera in my face. No problem until I came out of the supermarket and the realisation dawned that I’d bought more than I could reasonably fit on the bike. After serveral rearrangements the carrier at the back was piled high and there was nothing for it but to hang two loaves of bread from the handlebars and wobble home.

In the afternoon I needed to get a 25kg bag of layers pellets for my chickens so I asked for the car to be unclamped. What did they do? They gave me a bike with a trailer! My legs are coping fine but my arse is very painful!

These pictures from the final day of filming.

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Having written about how much fiilming they’ve done it will be interesting to see how much actually makes it into the programme. I talked to Dom Littlewood about this and he said 1 hours filming usually yielded 1 or 2 minutes of programme content! Maybe you wont even see me.