Margaret Thatcher once declared that anyone over 30 who still uses the buses is a failure. Maybe, but what a lot these winners miss when driving around in their air-conditioned Mercedes S500s insulated from the life going on all around them.
I have a choice of three buses: the 19A, the 13A and the 11. Each has its own particular character. A colleague of mine regularly catches a bus known colloquially as the library, because everyone gets out their books and if someone so much as sneezes there are repressive frowns. How different from the dear old 19A. At whatever stage you catch this bus you ascend the stairs to be hit in the face by a ghastly mephitis of cigarette smoke, fried food and sweaty adolescents. Sweaty and swearing adolescents. Try a few linking words between the swear words, I think. Try forming a proper sentence. Try some grammar. Fancy teaching that lot.
I choose my seat carefully but inevitably I end up beside a nose-picker. Everyone on the 19A seems to have a mania for picking - if it's not their nose, it's their ears, their teeth and other parts of the body that cannot be named in a family newspaper. There are other things too - such as strange, herbal smells that make you afraid you're going to start the teaching day on a chemically induced high. And all around you, coming at you through the fug, is the sound of people wheezing and hawking - the kind of sounds that drove Lawrence Durrell to seek exile in Greece. And Greece does seem strangely enticing on a cold winter's day on the 19A with the windows streaming with condensation and the air promiscuous with germs.
Never mind banning smoking in pubs and restaurants, what about the top of buses? I know it's forbidden, but does anyone do anything about it? Not if they value their life. Though I was once travelling on a 19A when a middle-aged woman strode determinedly down the aisle to confront the lout sprawled on the back seat giving us all cancer. "Smoking isn't allowed," she pointed out firmly, indicating the notice. We all cringed in our seats waiting for the avalanche of swearing, spitting, even fisticuffs that must inevitably follow. "Sorry," he replied politely, sitting up straight and stubbing out his fag. It was that simple. Or maybe he recognised an Irish mammy when he saw one. I wished I could take her home and bottle her for emergencies.
Another woman encountered on the 19A was less of a role model. Clearly in the grip of nicotine withdrawal symptoms, she rampaged up and down the bus like a baby elephant roaring for matches. We all politely replied that we had none. None of us had the guts to point out that smoking is actually forbidden on the top of buses. We got sworn at anyway. Daring to leave the house without a supply of matches, what kind of messers were we? (I've cleaned up the language.)
Sometimes things do get fraught on the 19A, particularly where pushchairs are concerned. Only one is allowed in its natural state, the others have to be folded up. I once waited quarter of an hour for this matter to be resolved. The episode became tinged with anxieties over racism since the woman who had bagged the pushchair place was white and the woman who also wanted to get on with her pushchair unfolded and was in dispute with the (white) driver was black.
Eventually, as often happens on the 19A, a compromise was reached. After many poisonous glares at the beleaguered driver, one passenger held the woman's baby and another held her shopping bags while she managed to get her pushchair folded. The bus finally pulled off with us all bathed in an air of self-righteousness and political correctness - unjustifiably, since the driver was only following the rules.
The 13A is far more genteel. It goes round by the Botanic Gardens, allowing you a good view of roses well into November. And it ends up in Merrion Square which anyone would think of as posh. The disadvantage is that it often changes drivers at Parnell Square so you are liable to be ignominiously chucked off and herded into another. Inevitably you lose your place in your book.
Best of all is the number 11. It starts off empty near my home so one can have the pick of the seats in a fume-free environment. And I do think it caters for a quieter class of customer. Given the choice I'd always pick it over either of the 13s and especially over the 19A. I never even run for the 19A. I mount it always with an air of sad resignation, right up to the last minute keeping a hopeful eye out for the 11.
Elizabeth Bowen knew about the individual characters of buses. In her novel, To the North, she writes that in 1930s London the number 11 was an entirely moral bus leading you blamelessly past Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall towards the City. The number 24, on the other hand, trundling as it did down louche Charing Cross Road, was not one to be recommended to young girls.
Buses - I'm addicted to them. All human life is there. I never step on one without a sense of adventure. Once on, however briefly, you become part of a community. Sometimes, especially on the 19A, you get off heartily relieved that you're unlikely to see any of your fellow passengers ever again. Still, that's the risk you run.
And as I am whizzed down a bus lane past stationary BMWs, I reflect that those flash cars may have satellite navigation, fax machines, TVs and PS1s but they're going nowhere for the next 10 minutes.
Who's the failure now, Margaret?