This photo was taken on Saturday morning during the Park + Ride part of my duty. The red camper van had arrived just before me on my previous circuit of the car park and for some unfathomable reason decided this was the best spot to park in the whole of the car park! As you can see the area is deserted becasue it’s about as far away from a ticket machine as you can get in the car park. Also note that relative to the number of empty parking spaces there are very few lamp posts! You guessed it – the camper van then backed into the one you see in the picture.

Having one of my passengers end up in the wrong place hasn’t happened to me for a long time. Over time I’ve fine tuned what I say, when I say it, where I say it, how I say it and how often I repeat it! But it had to happen again and as I switched the engine off in Birmingham yesterday and called out “this is Birmingham and the final stop” a voice behind me asked “when do we get to London?”

I’d taken the bus over in Winchester after it had collected passengers in both Southampton and Portsmouth. I then take it on to Birmingham. The driver of the local leg had obviously said that passengers for London should leave the bus and get onto the waiting London bus because about 20 passengers exited the bus the moment it stopped. I got aboard and went through the routine of completing the defect card, inserting tacho chart etc. and then stood up and faced the passengers (this is part of the fine tuning, I can see if anyone is asleep, totally oblivious to anything because of a headset etc!) “If you are travelling to London you need to transfer to the bus in front. This bus does not go to London”. They all stared at me and not a soul moved, so I sat down and drove off.

The next thing I do is to make an announcement over the PA system “Welcome aboard this Megabus service to Birmingham calling at Oxford, Coventry and Birmingham Airport” before going on to the bit about seat belts, emergency exits, no smoking etc. So the passengers will have heard me telling them twice where the bus is going, once face to face and once on the PA, plus the two times the previous driver will have covered the same ground. I’d have thought the message was as clear as it could be.

All the London passenger in Birmingham could say was “It doesn’t say I must change bus on here” as she waved her booking form printout. That’s true, but it does say a change of bus may be necessary, when you make the booking on the website. She just didn’t want to answer why she’d ignored the verbal instructions to change bus for London, she kept answering everything with “it doesn’t say I must change on this booking reference”!

If it had been up to me I’d have let her sort herself out and find her own way to London, but I had to inform Perth control about the situation. Big softies that they are they said she could travel on the 14:00 Birmingham to London bus for free! I imparted this news to her and then got a lot of moaning about “that’s not for another hour and a half”. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really cut out for a customer facing job.

I’ve just arrived in London 40 minutes before my scheduled arrival time and nearly an hour earlier that I often arrive. Why? Because it’s school holiday time. The traffic is light and everything runs so smoothly during school holidays. As I sped up the M3, passing those points where normally I’d be at a standstill, I got to thinking and the thought came that perhaps King Herod was a man born 2,000 years to early! If King Herod were to rule the UK in 2008 there’d be no need of schools, so everyday the traffic would run fine ;-)

It’s my birthday at the end of this month and we usually do something a bit ‘special’. In wondering what to do this year I went to the Ryanair website and looked at flights from Bournemouth Airport (only 40 minutes from home). Then found ‘free’ flights to Majorca and £1.49 flights back. Of course Ryanair add the taxes, card charges etc. but the total bill for two returns to Palma, Majorca was less than £60! We go on Thursday 24 April and come back on Saturday 26 April. I think if you calculated the per mile cost of these flights it’s even cheaper than Megabus. I thought that you had to book months in advance to get cheap airfares like that, not 14 days.

We were able to call Zimbabwe this morning (there have been teephone problems) and got the latest Zanu PF propaganda. Zanu PF are saying that Mugabe wants to stand down but if he does the military, who are loyal to him, say they will take control. So he’s staying in order to help his people avoid military rule! What utter and complete non-sense, but at the same time how clever. He says he wants to abide by the peoples decision but is unable to do so because of the harm it may cause the very people who opposed him!