the teddy bear

"Oh Andy he's such a lovely bloke, I call him my teddy bear." 

That's nice I thought as I absent mindedly eavesdropped.

"I mean seriously, he is such a lovely bloke." Her friend made a sound like "hmmm"

"He has just got out of prison though". Her friend turned to her.

"Oh yes" she said "What he do?"

"Manslaughter. Although don't know how they got it down to that. He did reverse over the bloke. Twice"

"God!" Said her friend.

"No but seriously he is lovely. You just can't push him or he'll loose it" 

"The thing is" said her friend "There will always be someone to push him"

The woman paused "I hadn't thought of it like that"

Stairs on wheels

The bus was packed. I will never, I thought, get a seat. I will just never get one. I will be standing the whole way, silently hating all these smug strangers with their bums on slightly sticky, uncomfortable seats. 

I stood at the bottom of the staircase, a fat lady and a businessman came down meant  that there would be a seat for me, a place for me to be happy, to silently love all my fellow passengers and wish them well for their days. As I climbed I began wondering, as I often do, about how many people a day fall down the stairs on double decker buses.

I found a seat by a window that was dripping with the heat of the daily commute. Sometimes when I'm feeling woozy on the top deck I fixate on the inevitable and dangerous descent that awaits me when I arrive at my stop.

'Please don't fall' I prey 'It will be painful, but mostly embarrassing and I will have to pretend I did it on purpose' A bit like when you see someone stumble in the street and then the stumble evolves into a small jog as if this was the stumble-ee's intention all along and their stumbling was by way of a small warm up before the real spurt of activity. 

If one was at school and the only way to get to class was to go up and down stairs that were on wheels that stopped abruptly without warning, the parents would have doubts about the education provided and worry about the danger posed by their child's perilous journey to the classroom. The health and safety lobby would be making banners saying "Our children are in danger, ban the mobile staircases. No!". 

But for some reason this insane practise on a bus is ok. I have never seen anyone fall down the stairs, but I think that's by luck, not design. One day 700 people will fall down different staircases across the length and breadth of the bus network and then London transport will have to replace the stairs with elevators. And that would be cool, until people got stuck in them and they would be banned too.

Oranges

I was just sitting on the number 19 going down Blackstock Road. It's Sunday, the bus is quite quiet. Someone rings the bell so the bus pulls over at the next bus stop. Then the driver gets out, blocking the rest of the bus from the front with the door. I think, oh damn he's waiting for the next driver this could take ages and I'm already late. 

But then the driver gets out, looking a bit nervous, as if he is doing something he shouldn't. He runs to the shop and picks up an orange, considers it, places it back and then picks up 5 other oranges. He places these 5 oranges in a plastic bag, looking around swiftly as if he were buying drugs- he pays the shopkeeper and runs back on the bus with the large bag of oranges, he avoids eye contact with the passengers, because to look at them would be to acknowledge what had just happened. He closes the door and starts the engine and I alight at Finsbury Park.

A new hat

I have a new hat.

It is a black trilby with a cream ribbon around it.

When I first bought my hat, which was on a Friday, I imagined life in my new hat, things we would do, people we would meet, places we would go to.

My new life in my new hat.

How I would laugh in my new hat.

In my new hat I would dance around pubs where people would try and borrow it so that they too could delight in a life with such a hat.

One day I will lose this hat on a bus.

Because that is what happens.

Walking

I've taken to walking around the streets of London and it has come to my attention that London is one giant pinball machine and I am the ball baring. 

I thought it was because I am small and because people are rude that I seem to spend my time bouncing off  people, walls and door ways but now I realise that obviously somebody in a parallel universe is playing London-themed pin ball. Every time I get barged, pushed, nudged or banged on the head by a crazy women with a fake Louis Vuitton bag it is not the carelessness of others but the design of a sadistic pinball addict somewhere other than here. 

I hate pinball and shall now boycott it on humanitarian grounds.

How much is a million

The other day I was on the bus going up Holloway road when a quite intimidating gang of 4 boys got on. They slouched up the stairs and limped with attitude down the aisle towards the back of the bus, where they splayed, dotting themselves in various seats that maximised the space they took up. One of them started playing music from his phone. 

'Oh shut up! I hate you' I grumbled silently.

Then one of them picked up the news paper. "500 billion bail out!" shouted one. This seemed to pick them all out of their malaise.

"How much is that...how much money would it take to fill up this bus?" asked another on of them.

"A Million!" Shouted the third one enthusiastically.

"Nah bruv, no way." he paused "In what notes?"

"Five pound notes. One million in five pound notes. It would take up this whole bus, we would drown, drown in a million pounds" He whispered the last bit, wistfully, as if this is was an ideal death.

"No way, one million pounds would be too big? It would never fit" Said the fourth one who until now had been silent."10, 000 pounds, how big is that?"

"The size of a large table...Remember? We saw it on that tv show..."

This conversation went on for ten minutes and was quite entertaining, musing as they did not just about this bus but other types of bus, single deckers, bendy buses, it ended when they got to their stop and bounded from the bus, enthused by their recent debate, alighting as a different group of men.  I have no idea what one million pounds looks like and probably never will...Unless the world economy submits to hyper inflation and we all have to take suitcases of money to the supermarket in the hope of buying a loaf of bread.