Musings by Paul Wigmore

A bus to the shops

I was waiting for the bus to the shops when a passer-by told me that it had arrived five minutes early, and departed. This happens frequently and can mean waiting forty minutes for the next one.  It's infuriating.  Alternatively it comes late which, by comparison, is almost bearable.

During the journey itself (forty minutes later) the bus became full, and when you have a full bus in these parts you find that almost everyone knows everyone else. George’s baritone swaps agricultural jokes with Ted’s bass. And because Ted is sitting behind him he has to shout. Among the contraltos several Muriels and Emmas deliver the local news to each other and the treble female teenagers screech and squeal and leave my eardrums singing. When we have to stop in order for a lorryload of noisily-excited sheep to squeeze past it does invite comparison.

The journey takes about half an hour on a good day. It was so nice to get into the city.

Do you find that in adolescent male and female the human voice is undergoing change? I’m not referring to the curious way in which all teenage remarks sound like questions, with that upward inflection at the end. I’m thinking about voice production. Boys seem to have developed an indecipherable guttural, glottal-stopped bark with hardly any d’s or t’s sounded and girls appear to send as much of their voice as possible down their nose. This means, among other deficiencies, that they are physically unable to pronounce the 'oo' sound. For a demonstration ask any girl - from children to young adults - to sing you the Happy Birthday song and you will, I swear, hear 'Happy birthday tee yee'. (I speak of the UK; perhaps the rest of the English-speaking world has been protected.)

Of course, it could all be down to my crumbling hearing. And that, in turn, could be down to the bus journey home later that afternoon. The route passes a senior girls' school. At the stop close to the school a crowd of senior girls waited. The door opened and the sound of senior-girl screaming, squealing and shrieking filled the bus before they were on board. By the time they had occupied the rear half the level was so high I actually had both hands clamped over my ears. I now avoid that particular afternoon bus.

The ‘Red Lion’ stop came into view and I rang the bell.  I moved to the door and became aware that our young driver was not slowing down. I lowered my head, leaned into his compartment and gave a delicate cough, meaning to follow up with a request to stop.

Yes, I suppose my cough was a bit close to his ear but you wouldn’t think a little cough would frighten a young man. He leaped in his seat like a startled faun and jammed on the brakes so hard that I shot forward, narrowly missing the windscreen. I sensed that the rest of the passengers were piling up behind me and that was not a pleasant thought. We stopped and I apologised to all.

Glancing back as I stepped down there was a lot of suppressed activity on the road behind us. In overshooting the bus stop our driver had pulled up alongside a road island, or ‘refuge’, thus offering the speeding 4x4 truck behind us the choice between smacking into our bus or a couple of bollards. He chose the former but managed to stop short.

Horns sounded behind us and engines revved. After stepping down I did think of turning and raising my hat to everyone but good sense prevailed.