Down at the library doing some research for my new job.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
Oh I don't know, something about Boston, something about us annoying one another, mostly moaning I expect.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
On The Buses
My Grand-Pop, Bill, was a conductor on the number 3 bus which ran from Crystal Palace, where he lived, down to Brixton, past The Oval, around Trafalgar Square and on to Piccadilly and Oxford Circus. I can only vaguely remember being on the bus once but unless he was putting on a special show just for me I think it's fair to say that he was a character who probably enlivened more passengers than he annoyed.
Eventually he became too old for the rigours of issuing tickets and he took a part time job with the police training academy around the corner from his house. We had to pass the building on our way to visit our Grandparents and I can clearly remember the three of us in the back of the Cortina giggling as we repeatedly sang, "Hello Grand-Pop cleaning the lavatory". It seems rather patronising now and maybe indicative of the social climbing our family was engaged in. However, my father never took steps to admonish us so maybe it was just playful fun and not disrespectful of a man who worked his entire life starting with delivering milk from a horse and cart. Cow's milk from a cart.
I try to use the bus as much as possible as it always seems a more interesting way to travel. Obviously you can see out of the window but the people seem more inclined to express themselves on a bus. Everywhere I go in Boston seems to be on the same bus route, the 66. It runs from Harvard all the way to Dudley Station which takes over an hour and seems to travel between two countries. Harvard is affluent, clean, predominantly white and stuffed with bars and restaurants and the area around Dudley Station isn't. I volunteer at a school near Dudley Station, I pay weekly visits to the dentist in Longwood, I visit someone in Brigham Circle and I've recently got a job in Allston. All on the 66 bus route.
The first time I took the bus back from Dudley Station a man at the front of the bus was exhorting his fellow passengers to show more emotion, not a plea I would have thought was entirely necessary from my experience of Boston buses. "We keep it all bottled up man, not allowed to show how we feel. Gotta' let it out. To prove that he was as good as his word he proceeded to break down. He folded in two, touched his head to his knees and wailed while rocking backwards and forwards on his seat. I don't mean sobbed. I mean wailed. He really let it all out and was an example to us all as to the merits of free expression. It wasn't the sort of spectacle that one feels able to observe with impunity but as I was unable to concentrate on my book I pretended to read while trying to focus on his words which were blurted out through the tears and snot and dribble he was so freely expunging.
He paused to answer the phone which I thought might be an opportunity to glean something slightly more coherent but the caller was treated to no more comprehensible an explanation than the rest of the passengers were. Following the call there was something of a lull as he described to a woman who was sitting on the opposite of the bus to him that the caller, "Didn't know, he didn't know'', and it eventually became apparent that someone close to him, perhaps his mother, had just died.
How 'bout that?
Eventually he became too old for the rigours of issuing tickets and he took a part time job with the police training academy around the corner from his house. We had to pass the building on our way to visit our Grandparents and I can clearly remember the three of us in the back of the Cortina giggling as we repeatedly sang, "Hello Grand-Pop cleaning the lavatory". It seems rather patronising now and maybe indicative of the social climbing our family was engaged in. However, my father never took steps to admonish us so maybe it was just playful fun and not disrespectful of a man who worked his entire life starting with delivering milk from a horse and cart. Cow's milk from a cart.
I try to use the bus as much as possible as it always seems a more interesting way to travel. Obviously you can see out of the window but the people seem more inclined to express themselves on a bus. Everywhere I go in Boston seems to be on the same bus route, the 66. It runs from Harvard all the way to Dudley Station which takes over an hour and seems to travel between two countries. Harvard is affluent, clean, predominantly white and stuffed with bars and restaurants and the area around Dudley Station isn't. I volunteer at a school near Dudley Station, I pay weekly visits to the dentist in Longwood, I visit someone in Brigham Circle and I've recently got a job in Allston. All on the 66 bus route.
The first time I took the bus back from Dudley Station a man at the front of the bus was exhorting his fellow passengers to show more emotion, not a plea I would have thought was entirely necessary from my experience of Boston buses. "We keep it all bottled up man, not allowed to show how we feel. Gotta' let it out. To prove that he was as good as his word he proceeded to break down. He folded in two, touched his head to his knees and wailed while rocking backwards and forwards on his seat. I don't mean sobbed. I mean wailed. He really let it all out and was an example to us all as to the merits of free expression. It wasn't the sort of spectacle that one feels able to observe with impunity but as I was unable to concentrate on my book I pretended to read while trying to focus on his words which were blurted out through the tears and snot and dribble he was so freely expunging.
He paused to answer the phone which I thought might be an opportunity to glean something slightly more coherent but the caller was treated to no more comprehensible an explanation than the rest of the passengers were. Following the call there was something of a lull as he described to a woman who was sitting on the opposite of the bus to him that the caller, "Didn't know, he didn't know'', and it eventually became apparent that someone close to him, perhaps his mother, had just died.
How 'bout that?
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