Things I don't see the point of - Part Four. Short bus journeys and eating competitions on trains

I went to Leeds on Sunday (from Darlington).  By bus and by train.  Car would have been quicker but public transport has more nutters.

There are many, many things I don't understand in life, and here are two new ones:

1) Why do people eat so much on trains,
2) Why do able-bodied people take incredibly short bus journeys?

I caught the 0950 train from Darlington, which arrived in Leeds at 1055.  A journey of just over an hour.  There was a family sat near me, all smartly dressed, looked like they were heading to a christening or some other family event, the women and girls were in dresses, the boys in smart shirts and trousers.  There were about nine of them, and between them they had about 16 Sainsbury's carriers.

The train hadn't even pulled out of Darlington, and 2 litre bottles of pop and family packs of Doritos and sandwiches and biscuits and cakes and just about everything else that Sainsbury's sells were piling out of the carriers and into their faces.  It was like one of those American eating competitions where, for example, someone has to eat 50 pickled eggs in a minute.  As for me, I'd had breakfast at home, and I was having lunch at my mum's.  I wasn't going to starve or die of dehydration during a 1 hour train journey.  A variation on this is when people on the York train have to sink 5 cans of lager each on a 45 minute journey to York when they're going to be drinking all day when they get there.

But people stuffing themselves stupid on trains wasn't even close to being the dumbest thing I saw on my trip to Leeds.  That honour was reserved for the phenomenon of the pointlessly short bus journey.

It started in the centre of Leeds.  A Russian man got on the bus, and asked the driver to take him to the bus station.  It's just there, the driver said, and pointed out the window at the bus station less than 100 metres away.  Just walk.  In mangled English the Russian man then explained that he wanted to catch the bus.  But it's just there!  the driver repeated.  'How much is it?', asked the Russian.

It isn't anything, said the driver.  Journeys that short, I don't even have a fare for that, just walk!  Rather than actually start his shift by throwing a Russian off a bus, he did in fact take him on the 30 second journey to the bus station, and let him ride the bus for free.

About 5 minutes later I saw a guy running alongside the bus with his arm out, with a young girl on a micro-scooter scooting along beside him.  He looked like the most desperate man to get on a bus since Keanu Reeves in Speed.  And so the bus stopped for him, and then they got off at the next stop!  If he'd carried on running he would have been there as quick as the bus.

That wasn't even the end of it.  When I got to Garforth three young lads with skateboards and those big cans of Monster energy drink were waiting at the bus stop on Ninelands Lane.  They got on and went upstairs on the bus, but no sooner had they sat down, then they were back down the stairs to get off at the skate park, which was the next stop.

Speaking for myself, I was always pretty shit on a skateboard, but my recollection is that riding one was a lot more strenuous than a 100 yard walk.  And these lads were about to go jumping on and off half-pipes and probably breaking their ankles, and yet they couldn't actually walk to the skate park.

When I was their age, I used to walk over 2 miles to school every day, just to save the 15 pence bus fare, so I could spend it on sweets, and when I was older, to put it towards pints of beer.

Another Sunday when I was waiting at the bus stop near my mum's to catch a bus into Leeds, there were two young lads waiting with me at the bus stop.  We seemed to be waiting ages for the bus, but it probably seemed like longer because the two of them were noisily discussing an app they were playing with on their phones, where you had to create a plague or virus and let it loose on the world, and the more people you killed, the higher the score.  I can't even begin to describe how dull the conversation was.

The only interruption to their game was when one of their phones kept ringing, they were obviously getting calls from another friend asking what time they would be home.  They kept saying to the friend 'We're just waiting to get the bus back down our end'.  My mum lives at the top of a hill in a place called Kippax, and some of Kippax is at the bottom of the same hill.  In bus stop terms, it's about 3 stops away.  It turns out that's where 'their end' was, because that's where they got off.  So, they waited around 20 minutes, during which they managed to annihilate the entire planet with a virus, and then they went 3 stops on a bus to get home, which took less than a minute.  That hill's so steep you could roll down it in less than 5.  In fact, you'd be so gravity assisted going down there you probably wouldn't even burn a single calorie, it's almost steep enough to abseil down.  And the phone calls they'd been having with their friend, if the friend had opened his window, they were so close they could have shouted to each other instead.  Unbelievable!

I actually walk places for fun.  A few weeks ago I walked the 3 miles each way to work, just to see how long it would take me.  Sometimes in the evening if I haven't been out all day, I just go off for a pointless wander, just to feel the fresh air, and to maybe notice things like trees and flowers, and the design of houses.  Admittedly this has become more hazardous lately, because there's bloody conkers everywhere, and one of these days, I'm gonna turn my ankle, but hey ho.

There is a bus stop at the end of my road where I could catch a bus into Darlington if I wanted.  But it's less than a mile.  Why would I bother?  I haven't even checked the bus times.

I just don't get it!  Do you?


Update - July 2014
Six months after writing this, I ended up moving to Leeds.  It wasn't just to avoid having to spend so much time on buses and trains but it could have been!  The six months between writing this and moving I pretty much walked to work every day.  3 miles each way.  I lived in Darlington for 11 months in total, and I never caught a bus once during my time there.  I used to catch trains a lot but that was because I had to travel long distances, that were beyond walking, and I was off cycling at the time.  I do occasionally catch buses now I live in Leeds, but it has to be for a minimum of 2 miles.  And even then I feel I'm being lazy.  

May 1979 - I only popped out for a hot dog, and they let Thatcher in

The first time I had mustard was up the Eiffel Tower.  I bought a hot dog, and they had this yellow stuff in bottles, and I thought that must be French ketchup and so I piled loads of it on my hot dog and then seconds later my tongue was melting off, and the hot dog ended up in the bin at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

But since then I have developed a taste for mustard and I often have it in sandwiches, and when I do it makes me think of my mum making us sandwiches when I was younger because she generally puts mustard in sandwiches, especially ham ones.

That trip to France was in May 1979.  It was the first time I'd ever been abroad.  I only went out of the country for 5 days, and Thatcher got elected while I was gone.  I found this out from a teacher who had bought a paper on the Champs Elysees.  She got in again in 1987 while I was in Germany.  She was always getting elected while I was out of the country.

That trip was great, but the coach journey wasn't.  We didn't go on one of those fancy buses with the toilets that they have now.  We just went on the same Wallace Arnold bus that we used to go a mile up the road to Kippax swimming baths in.  They're fine for just nipping round the corner, but they're not much good for an 18 hour journey to Paris.

That trip cost £63 which was an absolute bargain.  I also got a £4 reduction for not having a dad, because it should have been £67 but we asked for a reduction for being a one parent family.

I took some spending money, and I can't remember how much, but I know it cost 40p for a hot chocolate at the services at 5 in the morning and the West German football team were also in the services on their way back from beating Wales in a Euro 1980 qualifier.  I only recognised them from the tracksuits.  I didn't know who they were.  I bet the present international football teams don't stop at the services for a bacon bun and a ripoff coffee.

We got to see all the sights of Paris.  As well as the Eiffel Tower, we went to the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and Sacre Coeur.  I got terrified on the top of the Arc de Triomphe because I thought I might fall off, with the top being open, and even though the Eiffel Tower is a lot higher and you can feel it sway in the wind, it's all closed in so you can't fall off and that was okay.  I also saw the Mona Lisa and I was surprised how small it was.  We did also get driven round Paris at night on the Wally Arnold bus and got to see it all lit up.

One night in the hotel the teachers all went off to the bar to get hammered with the bus drivers and they left us unattended and we were running around the corridors of the hotel throwing fig biscuits at each other, and some of the girls were doing handstands against the wall and showing their knickers.  I'd never seen a fig biscuit before and having tried one at a later time I can see why they were getting thrown about rather than eaten.  They're horrible. 

And I shared a room with Richard Sharp and Andrew Greenwood, and we had bedside tables with lights in and I didn't see Andrew for about 5 years after that and the next time I did he was riding down Garforth Main Street on a bike with a green mohican (haircut, not a person).

At the time I took it all for granted, but now I marvel at the organisational skills of teachers, for taking a group of small children to a foreign country and taking us round all the sights of Paris.  I don't even like looking after small children while their parents are in the loo.

Thank you ferry much - A cautionary tale about drinking

For someone who got into quite a few drink related scrapes when I was younger, I've always been pretty self-righteous about other people's drinking.

Whether this has anything to do with having a drunk for a step dad, who used to pass out in the living room before 6 pm every evening, and who used to spend two or three hours a night shouting out in his sleep I don't know.

This atitude did lead me to almost leaving two unconscious friends on a ferry in a Belgium once, but thankfully some of the other people on the trip were better friends to them that I was, and got them off the ferry onto a bus.

It seems strange now, in these days when teachers are often too scared to take children on school trips at all, that the seven of us (Me, another Jonathan, John, Andy, Paul E, Paul H and Stephen) were sent off to Germany without a teacher at all.  I think it was assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that we were all pretty sensible lads.

Five of us were pretty sensible, but the other two managed to sink a whole bottle of Southern Comfort between them on the four hour ferry crossing from Dover to Zeebrugge (John and the other Jonathan)

I'll never forget finding John face down on the deck of a ferry in the early hours of the morning.  He had a mustardy yellow jacket which he was very proud of, and when I opened the door onto the deck I found him face down, not only with a yellow jacket but with a stream of yellowy vomit coming out from his mouth to one side.  The only way I can describe it is that it looked to me like his head was an egg that had been smashed against the floor and there was a trail of yolk issuing out from his head.

When we got into Zeebrugge at 5 in the morning, with the 2 of them still out for the count, the other 5 of us took a vote about what to do with them.  Leave them on the ferry, was my decision.  I think Paul H might have agreed with me aswell, but there were more votes in favour of dragging them off the boat, than there were for leaving them on it.  Hooray for democracy.

I bumped into Andy about a year ago, and we talked about our decision making process.  He said he would have left John but he and Jonathan had been friends for years, and he couldn't in all good conscience leave him there.

It was lucky for the two of them, that there were better friends than me there, or they might still be there.

A couple of years after this incident I found myself in a similar state of drink related incapacity.  It was my first Christmas at TSB.  I was 20.  We had a drinks party after hours at work before heading off to the pub.  Partly due to my own naivety, but also largely thanks to the stupidity of some of my older colleagues, I became the unwitting victim of some drinking games, which involved drinking paper cups full of mixed spirits.  I don't remember much about it, except I probably broke the world record for the shortest time elapsed between a pub opening its doors and one of its customer's being ejected for drunken-ness.  I almost got thrown out on the way in.  Being sick on my new boss wasn't the ideal way to kick start a career in banking either.

My lovely new colleagues, having had a good laugh at my expense, then left me propped up outside the pub and went back in to enjoy their evening.  Thanks guys!  Somehow my homing beacon still worked, and I managed to get on a bus and get home, although I scared my mum half to death when I got in.  She thought I'd been run over, and I was then sick some more, narrowly avoiding being sick on the cat's head.

Not only have I never had much tolerance for drunken-ness, I haven't got much tolerance for alcohol either.  Now I mostly avoid it, especially since the hospital put me on some drugs which most definitely don't mix with it, and which could kill my liver all by themselves.

It seems strange to me, that we are so alarmed by other forms of drug taking, yet we think getting smashed out of our skulls on drink is in some way just a great big laugh.

I've never found it very funny.