And there's me thinking...

Once is an accident, twice is careless (I think it goes). Well, twice in the last week I’ve got onto a bus, both very crowded with people standing. One of the front seats is vacant. Perhaps someone saw me and stood in advance of my arrival… (?) I sat down and immediately realised why the seat was free – or perhaps not.

The first time I found myself sitting next to a guy who stank… he stank of dirty clothes, dirty body, piss and shit. He ranted to himself and then, near his (and unfortunately my) stop, stands up and squeezes in, standing right in front of me with his arse right in my face. I protest:
“Are you getting off or what?”

He responds:
“Fuck off you fucking bastard. Don’t you tell me what to do you cunt… Are you getting off here then?”

“I haven’t decided” I reply.

And then this morning on the way to work, a crowded bus, front seat vacant, I gladly take it.
Immediately, I smell the piss, that overpowering smell of stale and fresh piss on body and clothing. I immediately think that everyone will think it’s me – “oh, it’s that smelly blind man!” I retch and somehow manage to cover the inside nostril.


Isn’t it funny how it all works: people might ignore me, they might unobtrusively offer me a seat, they might make a big deal of giving up their seat to the blind man, but nobody knows how to say “I wouldn’t sit there if I were you mate”.

Maybe there’s a collective sense of relief in the seat being taken, and with it, the happy removal of that stark reality of them less than comfortably standing around one very obviously vacant seat.

And what about being them, the one who, maybe through illness, homelessness, desolation, self-neglect – the one who, through misfortune or a less than conscious intent, offends that sense that elicits the reactions that are least able to be directly talked about.

And for the (collective) bus, perhaps we go together perfectly – two problems dealt with at once. If this is the case, my aloofness, my disgust, sense of pathos are all irrelevant to them…
And ultimately to me too.

The etiquette dance

Joining a bus queue this evening, I asked the woman in front of me which bus she was waiting for – she was waiting for the same ones as me. We talked a bit.

The bus drew up and she grabbed my arm to guide me onto it.
I said “it’s OK, you go first.
She said “No you go first”.
I said “no, you were first, I’ll follow you”.

We had a protracted stand-off. She wasn’t going to give up her place in the pecking order… I got on (laughing).

Not fitting the stereotype

Standing at a bus stop on Nelson Street - one of two adjacent stops – Two older Bristolian guys ran up the 20 yards from the next one to catch a bus at mine. The driver didn’t bother to stop for them.

One says to his mate:-
“Bloody typical white english behaviour. If ee’d been a Somali eed’ov stopped, if ee’d been a Jamaican, ee’d’ov stopped. Them English drivers just don’t care, the Somalis, vey care about people.”. His mate agreed.