Notes for an Essay on Buses
Commonplace Newsletter #113
This essay was written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the topic was Bus
[If you are a writer, you might consider joining us.]
Theory: a glimpse of the process can be just as compelling as the finished product. Sometimes more so, even. Having artists attempt to explain their work and thought process in interview format can be dull and (inadvertently) misleading but I find notes, storyboards, blueprints, early drafts, sketches and so forth to be fascinating. There’s something about looking at potential versus actuality. So today, for fun, I’m going to give you some raw notes regarding buses, of all things.1
Setting the scene: Sat on a ledge by the wide walkway (for lack of a better term) that divides the new bus station from the new leisure centre. Already there are cigarette butts in the gaps between the paving slabs along with grey and off-white circles of chewing gum dotted around the walkway. I suspect these will be eternal and that they will proliferate year on year. Newness isn’t new for long.
Peoplewatching #1: A momentary glimpse of some of the people going into the leisure centre circa 13:00 on Wednesday 28th February 2024 :
Bearded thirtysomething guy wearing dark trousers tucked into green Hunter wellies, a vast outdoor coat and a wolfhead hat thing where the ‘arms’ of the wolf cover the wearers ears and hang down to his shoulders2. What’s this guys story?
A guy in his sixties in a nondescript brown jacket. Doesn’t look like a gymgoer. So good for him.
And now three, no four, late teens each with the regulation broccoli haircut to go with the regulation black North Face jackets and the regulation fresh white Air Force One Low trainers3. I see this uniform everywhere, every single day I’m out on the street. Is this look international (as I suspect) or is it just an Anglosphere thing? And were myself and my school friends all lockstep in participating in trends when I was the same age as these broccoli kids? Was it ever thus?
Peoplewatching #2: Opposite the leisure centre entrance there are huddles of nicotine cravers passing time before their bus arrives at their gate. The vapers outnumber the cigarette smokers and the majority of the vapers- at least in this particular brief snapshot in time- are young women. Student age. Again the North Face jackets, again the Nikes, but the women at least have expanded beyond purely all-white Lows to the black and white Panda colourway and some even further to pink, peach or red swooshes. Those colours somehow match the sickly sweet plastic smell of the wafting vape clouds. Whether this is unconscious or an intentional act of multi-sensory co-ordination is an open question.
Observation: The walkway is a wind tunnel. This is what happens when these glass and steel new structures are nestled in close to each other. The wind chill factor is never highlighted in those 3D architectural ‘artists depiction’ videos that show the gleaming finished building with all of its greenery and clear skies and assortment of tiny faceless couples and families promenading around the grounds. I’m freezing out here. Time to move, to get the blood flowing a little.
Memory: For 6 whole months- all throughout the winter and into the spring of 20154 I used to catch a bus at 06:35 from [city that I live in] to [other biggish city in the region where my job was located]. Doing this added an hour to my journey versus taking the train but it saved me £10 on the fare and the job was away-from-home shift work so I only had to endure a 05:30 wake-up 5 or 6 times a month. The logic of poverty.
In those bleakest winter months the whole journey was in darkness and the upper deck of the bus was freeeezing. I can clearly recall wearing beanie and gloves and scarf and being able to see my breathe as I read my paperback. My feet gradually became so cold and numb on one journey that I nearly fell down the stairs as I tried to get off at my stop. The things we do to get by and save a few quid.
Present day: Around the corner from the wind tunnel is that original bus station from those cold winter mornings. Now it is a dilapidated concrete ruin. It is slowly being dismantled by a crew of labourers in hoodies and orange high vis jackets and boots and hard hats. A turquoise crane moves rubble while other workers climb scaffolding and move around the place. To my untrained eye they look like they are trying to look busy rather than actually being busy. Good for them. On this side of the metal barricade that surrounds the old station a few old men lean and observe the action. In Bolognia they call such (unwanted) sidewalk foremen Umarell. The cross-cultural difference, though, is that the original Italian Umarell offer critique and observations on how much better they would do the job if they were still of working age whereas here these English observers (myself included) just watch in silent contemplation for a minute or two before moving on. Maybe it would be different if this were a construction project rather than a destruction project.
Observation: On the old, soon to be gone original bus station there is a good amount of graffiti. Along with the only-to-be expected tags there is- in lurid bright green letters- a declaration to ‘BEAT THE COST OF LIVING GROW FOOD’. Hard to argue with that. Cuts across various ideological lines too. That particular spray-can wielder could well have a promising career in grassroots politics. Something about that slogan, combined with the fact that it was on a weatherbeaten concrete edifice with a green carpet of moss on what was left of its roof created a striking image. Nature is there and always vying to come back no matter how much we try and cover it up with structures and straight lines and the other markers of modern civilisation.
Earworm:
I packed up my belongings In a nylon carry-all hear the porter call He said, "The sky's the limit On this chartered trip away” Guess I’d better stay
On another early-start bus, commuting to another minimum wage job- this time in London in the Olympic year of 2012- I went through a phase of listening to this song on a loop on my iPod5. I guess this has created a Pavlovian pathway in which seeing lots of buses coming and going at the station puts this song into my head. And it is only while contemplating this song now internally ‘playing’ that I see that my looping of it back then was an obvious inner scream for a bit of escapism and leisure and fun. But then that could be said about a lot of things.
Peoplewatching #3: Sat inside the station, notepad in lap, pencil in hand6. Scrolling screen above each boarding door. Some departing buses are numbered and some are lettered. So the 38 departs next to the A which is next to the 57 and so on. It’s surprisingly quiet here. There’s no piped music here which is refreshing but a little strange. The intermittent Tannoy announcements of departures are punctuated by the low murmur of conversations and the rumble and scrape of wheelie bags being pulled along. Most people are sat on metal and plastic benches, scrolling in silence. A lot of ‘third spaces’ are like this now.
Spiderman: The nice quiet is broken by a toddler in a pushchair. He is wearing a full Spiderman get-up with boots and gloves and everything and saying ‘leave me alone’ to no one in particular. When is the cut off in age for dressing like a superhero in a public setting? He starts screaming No, No, No’ before disembarking from the pushchair to stumble-run to the vending machine. ‘Moooooommy please!’
This is going to end in tears I expect.
Advertising:
We’re hiring! Earn while you learn! [scan here & an arrow pointing to a QR code7] £29k/ per year + over time. £14.67 per hour. Sick pay plus company pension programme. Guaranteed hours8.
Peoplewatching #4: Possible slight uptick in duffel bags and shopping bags versus wheelie bag pushers in the last handful of months. Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part. Two separate women- one at stand 3, one at stand 7- both toting Louis Vuitton handbags. The classic gold on brown motif. Doesn’t really seem the venue for it. Juxtaposes strangely with my feeding a Tesco meal deal9 sandwich crumb to a mangle-footed pigeon who looks fairly close to deaths door. Either the bags are fake or over 2% of the people here have decided to spend a grand and a half on a Speedy Bandoulière 25 to tote on the local bus in the middle of a weekday afternoon. But who am I to make judgements?
Batman: Outside again. Through the automatic doors and to the wind tunnel and then home. Walking towards me is a old-before-his-time man with a hospital issue metal walking stick. No teeth from either drugs or homelessness or decades of antipsychotic medication10 or some combination of the three. He is wearing formal dress shoes, a Noel Gallagher type parka and… batman pyjamas. I guess this confirms that you are never too old to dress like a superhero. I smiled at the serendipity of this. I jot down ‘When is the cut off in age for dressing like a superhero in a public setting?’ and in under ten minutes I am presented with this answer, with this strangest of coincidences. I’m sure plenty of writers can attest that stuff like this happens to them all the time also.
Concluding remarks: These are the sorts of puzzle pieces that make up an essay, at least for me. These are collected and then cut, discarded and glued together into some sort of configuration to make the final picture. It’s amazing to think of the serendipity involved. Had I left the house 15 minutes later I would’ve seen different things. Had I been in a different mood I would’ve seen different things, or perhaps not see anything that I felt was worth remarking on at all.
As Holmes once said to Watson ‘You see, but you do not observe.’ And learning how to observe, if only fleetingly, is one of the true pleasures of going out into the world and attempting to write something.
As stated above ‘Buses’ is the topic for the monthly ‘Symposium’ for the STSC- the online creative collective that I run. I’m not sure I would’ve ever gotten around to writing anything regarding buses had it not been for this project. This is in spite of the fact that I’ve spent a good proportion of my life on some sort of bus travelling to some sort of job or event. And after all, you should write about what you know, as they say.
See the cover art on Action Bronson’s Rare Chandeliers mixtape for a perfect example of this particular item of headwear.
Given Nike’s- and the all-white Air Force One low in particular’s- ubiquity among the young adults in my city I have been toying with the idea of writing a whole essay on the phenomenon. I mean, I’m not old old (yet) and yet I can remember the No Logo era when Nike were seen as sweatshop-running exploiters and thus passé. And now they seem more dominant than ever despite people being (at least performatively) more conscious of politics and inequality than ever. But said piece degenerated quickly into old-man-shaking-a-fist-at-the-sky and so I consigned it to the great Essay Rubbish Heap.
I think this is correct.
A device that was later plucked out of my hand by a hooded youth on a bike not far from the flat I was living in at the time. Life in the Big City.
At one point, a kid in a puffy coat with a finger-wagging Sonic the Hedgehog on the back tried to gawp at my notepad as he passed. Mom was holding his hand but was more focused on finding her bus. My glimpsed pencil scrawlings proved to be illegible to the curious boy. I’m not sure if this is a disappoint to him or if it simply deepens the mystery.
Who on earth scans random QR codes in their local environment? I remember during the Covid a number of stickers cropping up on lampposts that purported to tell the truth about the NWO and the Pandemic etc if only you scanned the QR code provided. Why would you trust that link to not destroy your phone, especially if you were already distrustful in general at at fear-inducing moment. But presumably at least a few people must have scanned it. Imagine being radicalised by a lamppost.
If I could drive I might be tempted by this bus driver recruitment drive. If I didn’t hear my bus driver neighbour sometimes leave at 4 in the morning for his shifts, that is.
I like the Hoisin duck wrap/Reese Peanut Butter Cup/ Latte in a can Meal Deal configuration at the moment as it gets you the biggest saving for the fixed £3.90 price. I sometimes go for a chicken triple if I’m hungrier. And though this may make me a traitor to my nation I simply can’t opt for Cadbury’s given how far they have fallen of since the Kraft takeover.
To my recollection antipsychotic medication doesn’t list tooth loss as a known side effect but the vast majority of the dozens and dozens of schizophrenics I have worked with wear dentures.
Broccoli hair is indeed a thing in the US too.
Really enjoyed seeing this piece of your process. Also, "the logic of poverty" is freaking great - I know you've written adjacently about poverty and such, but have you written on it specifically as a topic both of cultural and personal interest? I would dig reading that from you.