Yesterday I was channel hopping on Freeview and came across ‘On the Buses’ on ITV3. From this site “The series ran from March 1967 to March 1968 and a short special was shown as part of Christmas Night With The Stars on 25th December 1967. 24 episodes of 30 minute duration”.

I felt really old watching it since I can remember it so well. It was in black and white, every scene had at least one, and more often several, of the cast smoking cigarettes. Lots of sexual stereotyping, a female conductor complaining that women “can’t be drivers or Inspectors”. Male/Female banter which today would result in a sexual harrasment claim and thousands of pounds in damages. And, worst of all, drivers drinking beer in the bus station canteen in uniform. The drinking was done after the duty had ended and whilst a darts match was being played but I don’t think that would be much of an excuse today!

I’m pretty chuffed with my Google ranking.

My site statisitcs show those visitors who arrive via a search engine and the words they’ve typed into the search engine. Recently I’ve been noticing an increasing number of visitors who’ve arrived here having only typed the one word megabus into google.co.uk Top place for the search is megabus.com, second place goes to megabus.com/uk and in third place loades.net/megabusblog.

I’ve just come across a couple of interesting blogs which I’ve added to the ‘Blogs I Read’ list on the left. The first is To the Regiment – I wish I was there which seems an odd name. It’s also got some other odd, perhaps idiosyncratic would be a better word, ideas. For example ” ……. this blog is not listed on Blogger; nor was the box ticked allowing search engines to “lurk””. “Should anyone come across it in addition to those who know of its existence and its author then they are welcome to read it”. And, on the subject of comments “Some people’s ideas of blogging is to allow anything, leave yourself open to comments, commendations, criticism; mine is not”. The author is a coach driver on what appears to be scheduled services, but he manages very successfully to hide both the company for which he drives and even the area in which he drives. For example he only ever refers to ‘motorway’ and not the M4, M5 etc. Places are never named it’s always ‘city’ with a lower case ‘c’. He may, or may not, be your cup of tea :-)

The second blog is only a month old and I hope the author keeps it going. It’s I am the Passenger. She/He started the blog after coming across bus driver blogs and wrote “Some of them have interesting stories about interactions with passengers, so I thought that maybe it should be the passengers’ turn. I have no idea how regularly I will keep this up, or whether it will be interesting, but we will see”.

Today I drove the Winchester to Birmingham and return Megabus. The return departure from Birmingham is at 15:10 and with monotonous regularity there is someone at the stop asking about the “two thirty five bus” to Glasgow. I then ask to see their ticket and explain that the 02:35 time on the tickets means that the bus went 12 hours before they thought it should! They’ve arrived for a non-existent 14:35 departure. I’ve written about this before, once when the passenger was foreign and didn’t seem to be able to grasp the problem. Other passengers who do understand what’s happened when it’s explained are usually, and quite naturally, fed up but are at least philosophical about it. Today’s passenger wanted compensation for the bus leaving early! I asked him why he thought Megabus should pay him compensation when he turned up 12 hours late for his bus and he complained that “no one told me it was in the morning and not the afternoon”. He agreed the ticket showed the time as 02:35 and understood the 24 hour clock but felt that Megabus should put the word ‘morning’ or ‘afternoon’ after the 24 hour time format. I just smiled and told him to ask Customer Service for any compensation he thought he deserved.

When I got to Oxford I knew that one of the passengers who’d boarded in Birmingham was ticketed for Oxford. As I pulled up at the stop I announced “this is Oxford” and opened the door …… silence, no one moved. I announced again “this is the only Oxford stop” and still no one stirred. I checked my ticket list and then announced “the passenger with ticket number ‘x-abcd’ has a ticket for Birmingham to Oxford so this is their stop. Finally a young woman said “I think that’s me” and got off. Odd.

Today, at Winchester, I took over the Megabus from Bournemouth to drive to London. At Winchester those passengers from Bournemouth and Ringwood who are travelling to Birmingham transfer to the Megabus from Portsmouth which continues to Birmingham. And Portsmouth/Southampton passengers for London from that bus transfer to the Bournemouth bus for London. So it’s a bit of a busy swap around at Winchester.

As soon as I was onboard at Winchester one guy, from the Portsmouth bus, tried immediately to get on and I asked him to wait while people tried to get off. I also tried to get off the bus to open the lockers for bag storage but he was so close to the door I couldn’t get off! I asked him to please stand back while people get off, he moved about 6 inches backwards :-(

Next I called out to everyone there “May I have those passengers starting from Winchester, please” (it’s much easier to check their tickets first and then board the transferring passengers), I was expecting 12 passengers in this category. Nine boarded and then the guy who couldn’t wait to get on appeared in front of me “I’m boarding the Winchester passengers at the moment” I said. ” I think they’re all on” was his response. I called out asking if there was anyone else starting from Winchester and the three people after him called out! I asked him again to please get off the bus whilst I loaded the Winchester passengers.

What is it with these people who can’t wait 3 minutes to climb aboard?