Andy, you’re a star

One of my friends died this week.

Those seven words were incredibly difficult to type, and don’t even seem real less than 5 days on. But over the past few years my chum Andy always said such nice things about my blog that he deserves some words, no matter how hard they are to commit to the keyboard.

It’s actually the second time I’ve had to do it this week. My job meant that it came down me to send the confirmation email that he had passed away to managers and then the whole building we work in. I couldn’t do it at first. The words were written, but I didn’t have the heart to send it – it would be me making it official. Then I took a breath, and actually realised it was my honour to do something on his behalf. And besides, he’d have done it for me – and done it bloody well.

When someone dies, you learn a lot about them from the reaction of people. Me? I always thought Andy Baker was smart, loyal, friendly and funny. So to read and hear dozens and dozens of similar sentiments, you know you’ve lost someone truly special. Honestly, if you can see his Facebook page you’ll take 2 hours to read the messages. That’s an hour for the words, and an hour to dry your eyes. Truly, he was well loved.

Someone once said “Don’t focus on how someone died…focus on how they lived.” Andy would have liked that, principally because it was from a film about Bruce Lee and one day at work he turned up bleary eyed and said to me, with a wink, “Didn’t get to bed until late, Enter the Dragon was on so I had to stay up”.

Everyone has their own memories of how he lived, and looking back over the last few years there were plenty for me to choose from.

Like the time he was too busy at work to notice that the card he’d been passed to sign was for someone who was leaving – and as a result he was the only person to sign said card with ‘Happy Birthday’. I remember breaking the news to him, and laughing together until we could hardly breathe.

At work, we talked about films all the time, and no matter what movie we were discussing, it always came back to a conversation about films shot in Rotherham and Sheffield, and how cinema could always be improved by adding in Sean Bean. And while he was a proud Yorkshireman, Andy was always the first to make soft southerners like me feel at home.

He was also a model professional. Always conscious of the people who worked for him, or the people he represented, and trying to make sure that whatever he had to communicate or do, it was the right thing. If you needed support, he always had your back.

And when he needed to, he got passionate. I’ll never sit in Meeting Room 6 at work again without remembering the time he nearly came to blows there in a particularly heated exchange with a colleague. Andy was in the right, and the guy had pushed his buttons, but it was so funny to watch him get more and more frustrated. We laughed long and hard after the event, Andy particularly proud to hear how red his face had got. It’s rare you see people stick up for what they believe in. But he did.

Outside of work he was just as much fun. If you ever saw him out he invariably had a pint in his hand, and normally because he’d just bought the first round and it was a drink he was handing to you.

And then there was the karaoke. Andy had practiced for weeks, keeping his song choice confidential until we were safely locked in the private karaoke booth. A few drinks for courage and he got up to sing Firework by Katy Perry. My word. It really wasn’t very good. It was a brave choice, but his tuneful Northern male voice just couldn’t hit the required female American pitch. 

Andy knew it, and what could have been embarrassing just turned to laughter half-way through, as he mock-raged at the lyrics (“these aren’t the right ones, I’m sure”) and his performance ended up more spoken word than song. Never have a seen a room of people laughing together so much, and it was Andy laughing the hardest.

When he eventually handed back the mic, tears of joy in his eyes, and sat down next to me he swigged a Budweiser and said “I think I over-reached myself there." In reality, he could belt out a tune, his follow-up of Common People and an Arctic Monkeys medley (“I need to stick to Northern accents” he told us) were superb, but his destruction of Katy Perry will stay with me forever.

I’m sure different people have their own favourite memories, probably better, but that karaoke night will always sum him up to me - always giving something a try, always putting his heart and soul into it, and always doing it with a smile. 

I’ll never see that smile again, or hear that South Yorkshire voice, but, like all who knew him, I’ll never forget them. And if we keep remembering someone, no matter how hard it might be at times, they’ll always be with us.

Thank you for being who you were Andy. I hope you’d have approved of this blog one final time.

I AM IRON MAN

I have a confession to make. Often, especially when my wife is at work, I like to go into the living room, with a beer, close the curtains, turn the lights up and experience hours of hot exquisite pleasure...through ironing.

I'm not making this up. Honest. I really love ironing. Even when I melted a pair of pants the other week, I still loved it. Really. Some things I make up (like that thing about having robot legs and being able to fly) but this I assure you is true. I bloody love it. Apparantly I'm not alone. Tom Baker devoted nearly a chapter of his autobiography to ironing. He's not mad is he? He is? Oh right.

I'm not particularly OCD and I couldn't think of anything more creased than my big old face, but there's something inherently wonderful about taking clothes and putting some order into them. There's a challenge - some items start as crumpled monsters and end up flattened happy friends. There's a level of skill involved - I rapidly switch between settings (1,2 or 3 - those are the main ones aren't they?)to ensure the right temperature is achieved. And the joy of turning a jumbled washing basket into 20-25 presentable items on hangers making the front room look like Gok Wan's house is wonderful - I sometimes even do a little post-ironing dance to celebrate (alright, I made that bit up).

For me, you have to enjoy ironing with something else. A Boxset of 24, some radio comedy or just Sky Sports football scores rolling in. A cheeky beer or two is often an ideal companion - however, don't have too many as you'll end up with very bizarre creases in your clothes or the phone rings and you accidentally burn your ear in confusion.

I guess it harks back to my last post about how my brain takes things in and processes stuff. Why ironing to me is more entertaining than soap operas, or how I imagine when you ring the bank to 'set up a direct debit' they open a cupboard and activate a small box with legs with the word 'direct debit' on it, which manually goes to your bank - queues up - and removes the cash over the counter.

Anyway, give ironing a chance eh? You never know, you could be just like me.

I have new mail - 975,421 of them

I usually don't believe a lot of the rumours about the internet. You know, like downloading certain files gives you a stitch, your computer will actually smell of pork if you visit a certain site or holding down CTL+ALT+R+U+N+S makes you need the toilet.

But some things are undoubtedly true. I still despair of hearing people say 'I only clicked on the button marked DOWNNLOADD UNLIMIMTED MONEY HERRE and it installed a virus that sent pictures of Adrian Chiles to all my email contacts' and once or twice i've had emails from 'YOUR BANK' telling me 'DEAR LOYEL CUSTOMER, WE NEED YOUR ACCOUNT DETAILS' etc.

Frankly, my bank wouldn't have the time to do that, what with sending me personal loan offers and copious marketing material with comedy cartoon characters on them every few days.

But Spam email. Well, that really does happen, and I sure does know it. I used to have a yahoo email address - ah, it was my first hotmail account (goes teary eyed with nostalgia) - and for years I had no problem. Then, back in 2005, I got a few spammy things. Nothing too racy, just video/tv download sign ups, online gaming type things.

And I did the stupid thing. I replied with the subject line "UNSCUBSCRIBE". Oh dear lord know. As schoolboy an error as spelling Sutton Coldfield as Sutton Coalfield in my GCSE Geography exam, and claming it was a place built entirely on coal mining.

As you may know, if you send UNSUBSCRIBE back to these emails then the automated system knows it's found a valid email address and then proceeds to tell all of it's spam soldiers to advance. Within a few weeks I was clearing out 10-15 pieces of spam a week. But then clearly, the spam word got round 'Hey, head over to timolsky@yahoo.co.uk - there's a party going on.

And the spam grew. The messages from the likes of Ellis Casey: Re Pharmyceuticals for you and Bingo Wangrasster Re: iiii have love message, they started to pile in. I couldn't even deleted them in date order as - somehow - the spam started coming from dates like 20 Dec 2983 (really? time travel emails?) It got to the point where I had to leave the account, there were over 100 spam emails, it was doomed. So I set up a new one and left it behind.

Now I'm very careful what I sign up to, and that I never reply to stuff I really don't know about. And a good job, because I went back into my yahoo account today for the first time in 2 years and had 975,421 new messages waiting for me.

Can't wait to reach one million. Maybe I'll buy some cheap watches, discount viagra and whatever Bingo Wangraaster's love is.

Silly questions drive me mad

I've heard some stupid questions in my time. Last year my wife woke up to find one eye inflamed, closed over, swollen up - she looked like the Elephant Man. We went to get medical attention and when she talked to the receptionist - with one eye inflamed, closed over, swollen up she was asked "Ok. Is it affecting your vision?". Erm. Yes. Next question.

And on the subject of very silly questions, well, maybe the answers are the silly things, I was listening to someone on the radio who had failed their driving theory test 3 times who complained they thought they shouldn't have to do it before they could drive.

I'm sorry, but you really need to be passing that before they let you behind the wheel of a car. It's basics. I like to make things up for comic effect but this stuff is comedy gold. So when you are struggling to answer the following genuine theory test questions, it's time to get a bus pass and forget the car for the minute.

Why are vehicles fitted with rear fog lights? (Mark one answer).

-To be seen when driving at high speed
-To use if broken down in a dangerous position
-To make them more visible in thick fog
-To warn drivers following closely to drop back

I'm guessing the word "fog" may be a clue

At the scene of an accident you have to treat someone for shock. What should you do? (Mark one answer)

-Sing to them
-Try and cool them down
-Keep reassuring them until qualified help arrives
-Give them liquids to drink

Could I sing reassuring messages to them, would that not be allowed. What if I'm a professional singer? I'm too busy cooling them down with lilt anyway.

You are driving through an automated rail crossing with barriers when the lights begin to flash. What should you do? (Mark one answer)

-Continue across at your current speed
-Stop and reverse
-Speed up
-Get out and look for trains

Yes, get out and LOOK FOR TRAINS, and while you're at it why not eat some razorblades, cover yourself in petrol and light some matches.

If you need help answering any of these, please drop me a line. Don't attempt to travel to see me to discuss, else I fear you - along with anyone in your path - may end up dead.

Nooses for weasels?

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I think it’s because I’ve been too busy realising I’m thick.

Seriously, I really am quite thick. Imagine if we were all sausages. I’d be one of those thick ones. Imagine hearing someone with a lisp-like speech impediment saying the word “sick”, and they could be mistaken for describing me. If I was a TV host, I’d be Vernon Kay. I’m so thick I’ll be lucky to end this

You might wonder how I’ve got to this conclusion, when only a few years back I was claiming I was a genius.

It’s just that I’ve realised some of the basic things in life, I haven’t really got right. I admitted one of them to people the other day – that until the age of 30 I didn’t know why there were different colours of toilet rolls. Honestly, I didn’t. Up until then I bought various colours because I thought “ooh, I’ll have pink ones this week” or “I feel a bit down, perhaps blue toilet rolls will reflect that mood?” I honestly didn’t know that you bought them to match in with the colour of your bathroom. Same with mouthwash. Saying that, if I had a bright green bathroom, I’d probably be mental anyway.

On a more advanced scale, I remember the many times I’ve opened loyalty card statements from supermarkets and been delighted to see that the vouchers for money off coupons are on products that I not only like, but that I really probably would buy. I had it down as a co-incidence, not thinking that, just maybe, they probably looked at what I bought before. No. It must have been magic.

There’s lots of other things I could name, like not realising that the little hooks on the insides of car roofs were for coats (What were they for Tim? To secure nooses for weasels?) – I’m surprised I haven’t fallen for a scam online by now.

That would never happen anyway as my friend, the Nigerian grandfather I never knew I had and recently contacted me on email about my inheritance, will testify. When he gets back to me to confirm those bank details are ok of course.

THIS IS A POLITE BLOG

The world is a horrible place at times, war, famine, ITV2, but I find immense solace in the simple use of words on signs. Well, the misuse of them at times.

Take today. I was at an exhibition and we were asked to join in by giving our feedback. I knew this from the sign that said "OFFICAL FEEDBACK ZONE". So my first bit of feedback was "You've spelt OFFICIAL wrong".

A particular delight are those signs, usually at places of work, that begin "THIS IS A POLITE NOTICE" before going on to lecture you about something.

First of all, the phrase "THIS IS A POLITE NOTICE" rarely makes me think that is polite. If you're having to tell me it's polite, frankly, I don't believe you. In fact, just be polite in the first place. It's a bit like startint a conversation with "I'm not racist...but" or someone saying to you "I'm going to show you the funniest thing ever" before showing you an episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.

If you have to qualify it before you say it, think about what you are about to say.

Oh, and you don't need to say it's a NOTICE. I kind of got that from the way it was some words on laminated card on the wall. I didn't look at it and think "Ooh, what's that? Is it a kumquat?". Unlikely to be the case in the gents toilets.

Anyway. In the office I currently work in we have printers with little screens on that use lovely words. When I've finished printing it says "Goodbye...Print safely."

I can't help but reading that in a threatening manner. I think it's the dots, like it's saying "Be careful eh? You never know what could happen do you.... Watch it sunshine." It's like a Lexmark Reggie Kray. Also, I only really know how to "Print safely", it's rare I try printing standing in a bucket of water with a dangerously wired toaster in my hands or do A3 copies whilst poking a crocodile in the nipples.

Anyway, my final piece of wording was in a toilet cubicle (stick with me). On the back of the door was an advert that said (exactly as written here) "Printed advertising works. You're reading this aren't you." Imagine my delight to then see comments added (in different writing each time) that said:

- Shouldn't that second fullstop be a question mark?
- I feel there should also be a comma after this
- Yes, the second line is interrogative, it should finish with a question mark
- Good revisions everyone

And slap bang in the middle, just to finish it off, someone had then added a much more typical piece of toilet graffitti that said.

-UP THE BUM? MEET ME HERE FRIDAYS.

Thank the lord it was only Thursday.

Wonky wrist-itis and talking to God on the big white telephone

Yes, another blog that's taken quite a while to write. The gaps between blogs seem to get bigger all the time. It's not that I don't enjoy writing them, or that exciting stuff happens - I mean, that thing, with the tiger, in Belize, that was ace.

No, it's just that I'm writing all over the place at the moment. I'm blogging about films and TV and getting total strangers either telling me I'm an idiot or that I make them 'laugh out loud at work' - which is nice (unless the latter is the CEO of my company, and he's reading the magazine I edit). I'm writing my other blog, the one no-one knows about, not even me (am I making that up? you'll find out? Or will you?). Then I'm writing this other thing, which is kind of why I'm here now - digging up old jokes and repurposing them for another use.

And the other reason is that I've been sick over the past month or so. First up, my hand stopped working. Now, that's worrying for most people, but for writers, mime artists and lonely teenage boys, it's downright catastrophic. I had a bout of, what is technically called, erm, wonky-wristitis. That meant my left hand couldn't grip properly and I had to sleep with it elevated (i.e. on a pillow, not in a facist salute all night).

Checked out by a specialist I had a variety of treatments including some light physio, a brace to keep it in position, oh and a RUDDY MASSIVE NEEDLE INTO MY WRIST JOINT. To be honest, that didn't hurt at all, because I had local anaesthetic. So if you have to have it, you'll be fine.

I am, of course, lying. It was bloody awful. Worse than toenail surgey. Worse than turning on TV and finding all channels have Myleene Klass on. I actually had to laugh out loud, really loud, for 15 seconds as the sadistic kind man pumped cortisone into my joint.

Well, the good news is that it seems to have fixed it. Which was great, as until then I had a wrist limper than John Inman, in a special zero gravity version of Are You Being Served?

Then, a few weeks later, I came down with food poisoning. Now, don't believe the hype, it's not the glamourous condition that people have hyped up it up to be. One dodgy curry starter seems to have been the source. A mixed kebab. Well, it was mixed when it came back up.

2 days until I could eat properly. A week until I could function like a human again. Alright, maybe my fault for being a fatty, but seriously - does it have to be that nasty? Can't the human body have an 'undo' facility that doesn't last the best part of a week?

So that's my excuse. Wonky wrist and wonky, well, I won't go into more detail than that. That and all the writing. Still, nice to pop by and find that people are still happening by this page and even leaving comments on old posts.

And I thought I was the sick one...

Co-incidence? You decide...

When I recently read that we are now only 3 steps away from everyone in terms of being connected I must admit that I was sceptical. A handy bit of research to make a good bit of PR I thought.

But then I considered some of the stuff that has happened to me.

I got a new job, quite by chance, with a mobile phone company. The chap I took over from here had just got engaged and there were lots of congratulations messages on his facebook page. One was from his cousin. She looked vaguely familiar.

I did a bit of checking and it turns out that she was the best friend of my best friend's girlfriend at Uni, someone, I had been drinking with many times and last saw in 1997.

At that moment it was like the world stopped spinning, zoomed in on me for a minute, back out to the edge of the solar system and then started up again. I felt simulataneously the smallest yet biggest person in the whole universe, like it was all put together for a reality programme like in The Truman Show.

You might not think that was a great co-incidence. But I've moved 450 miles around this country, had various jobs, made crucial decisions at certain times in my life, yet there was my life falling back into the path of my past without my knowing it. It's all some sort of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing if you ask me.

How does that work? How do these connections pop up time and again? I rented a room off a chap who went on holiday to Australia, he met a girl, completely at random, in a bar in Melbourne. When they both returned to the UK I met her and it turned out that at her place of work she sat next to a girl I had worked with for about a year some 350 miles away.

That same girl I worked with, years before, had a part time job as one of two barmaids at a college bar in Cheltenham. The same college bar that i always went to when visiting my girlfriend of the time in Cheltenham - she must have served me a drink.

Utterly. Completely. Mad. Brain. Hurt. Need. Lie. Down.

I did some research and, apparantly, this is why 'miracles' are perceived to happen -because there are so many variables, and bits of information being processed (millions a day) that eventually something co-incidental is much more likely to happen than not.

Frankly, it just makes my head hurt. And if you managed to read all of this without it hurting you too, then you're clearly a lot cleverer than me.

Hello, is that the Chicken Cafe?

How do you get away from people you don't want to speak to? It used to be impossible, as you had to pick a ringing phone as things like caller id didn't exist.

When I was young we used to get phonecalls every night, regular as clockwork with people asking "Is that the Chicken Cafe?". It happened for months. Turned out our number was the same as a place called "The Chicken Cafe" in a nearby town. Same number, different area code.

It got so prevalent we started answering the phone with a cluck and once told a customer we were full because of a big egg conference in the area.

Of course, now mobiles have come along and made it easier by showing you who was phoning. Then it moved on to allowing you to customise the ringtone and picture on your phone, to give you more warning. I actively have pictures of monsters and villains to represent the people I don't want to speak to. If Dracula pops up, I ain't speaking to him (he works in Banking).

So it should be so easy now to avoid speaking to the wrong people. Well, it should. Until your phone tells you that call is from "private number" and human nature takes over.

I know that "private number" more than likely means it's from a place with lots of phones that go through an exchange. But whenever it pops up I'm always intrigued. I think that it might be from someone like the Premium Bonds people, someone headhunting me for an amazing job testing PS3 games for a living or maybe the local curry house offering me a loyalty card.

So, inevitably, I have to pick up. And then I find it's my bank or a telesales call and I'm miffed. I seem to get a lot of people offering me a chance to win a cruise - the most woefully inaccurate piece of marketing I've ever experienced - they might as well be inviting me to my own guillotining.

Why can't it be someone amazing once in a while? A friend of mine works in the media and has become good friends with an icon from my teenage years, so apparantly one day my phone will ring - an unknown number and when I answer I'll be speaking with 90's pop icon Betty Boo.

And you know what. It did. And she was very nice to me, despite the fact I sounded like a mentalist stalker.

Take that Chicken Cafe.

Face-ing up to the truth

I don't want to sound like some old (mid-30's) curmudgeon or anything, but it's getting harder and harder to enjoy Facebook. Now, I know that something as trivial as that shouldn't be occupying me, but considering it was Facebook that got me into social media, which led to blogging, which is starting to take off and go places, I thought it worth a rant.

Time was when Facebook felt new and fun. People posted interesting stuff. Ads at a minimum. Spam was just a spiced tin meat. You wanted to be friends with everyone - "Oh look, the chap who used to bully me at school, you know - the one who smashed my head with marbles - he wants to be friends..I really must accept" (completely true, and completely me).

Of course, you do the whole 'Facebook cull' bit where you look through who to keep on your prized list (family, good friends, people who can give you discount on things etc.) but nowadays I've taken - I'll freely admit - to minimising people's posts so I only see 'important' messages, or often not at all. Sometimes, it's the only way I can cut through the noise.

See, the thing is I like a bit of quiet, punctuated with some interesting things. I've got a few chums who rarely post, but when they do it's normally a beautiful photo, or a piece of art they've done, or just a nice joke. I like that, it feels surprising. Hurrah for them.

Of course, I'm acutely aware that I do annoying things. So don't feel afraid to minimise my posts if you don't like links to poorly written blogs, pictures of cats doing humanish things or poor quality puns. Seriously, we don't have enough time in the world as it is, so make a little more by doing away with those things you don't need to know about. Then use the spare 5 minutes a day (35 minutes a week, 30 hours a year) to do something more fun.

Anyway, here're some of the things that happen on Facebook that I really wish wouldn't:

- People publicly telling me they on the toilet. Yep, thanks for that,  makes me remember not to shake your hand or touch your phone when I see you.

- People continuing to click on those 'Click likes if you hate cancer' or 'If we get 1million clicks our dad will punch himself in the face'. For the final time, the more you click these, the more the page becomes worth in Facebook terms, the people behind the site sell the page to a marketing firm, and we will all get more spam until the entire front page of Facebook is just adverts for deoderant and dating sites. I especially mean the cancer ones by the way, because I'm yet to meet anyone who actively likes it, so I'll take it as read that we are all pretty much against it. If you're not, let me know.

- Uploading more than 10 photos - Lots of people upload photos, and some of them (obviously not mine) don't have cats in. But the other day someone uploaded 245 photos, and by the time I had got to the 12th at least 5 of them were out of focus and 3 were so similar they could have been used in a 'spot the difference' competition. I couldn't go on, as I'm pretty sure my eyes began to bleed. Pick your best ones and showcase those, go on.

- Using the word 'loose' when you mean 'lose' - Misplaced apostrophes, I can just about handle in the social media world, but this whole loose/lose thing somehow gets to me more than anything else.

- Too many updates in one day - I'd love to see a Facebook where we only get to do one or two things a day, so people would pick and choose what they said. Until then, can't we all self regulate a bit better? Someone did 28 updates the other week. 28? I don't think you can do 28 different things in a day unless you're an octopius with OCD.

- Not ever posting anything. Ever - Sorry, it's like going to a party and you are just standing in the corner staring at us all. Either that or you died and your Facebook account is still going, in which case I apologise.

Anyway, rant over. See you again? I hope so, but it's your choice entirely, because if you've got something better to do with your time than read my old nonsense, then go for it - I really won't hold it against you.

The me on the bus goes blog blog blog

I was on a bus today!

I thought that needed calling out, because I haven't been on a bus in ages. I remember, especially back in the 1990s, I loved buses. You couldn't keep me off them, well, apart from when I got to my destination - it would have been stupid to stay on any longer than that. Yep, it was all great indie music, dreaming of the year 2000 (will we have jetpacs?) and bus travel back then.

Since I made the switch to a car over a decade ago, my daily bus journeys have almost disappeared. But today, due to the weather, I decided to meet the missus at her workplace, so I could make sure she'd get home safely. Ah, how sweet eh? Well, that and I didn't want her wrecking the car, it's insured in my name for god's sake. Anyway, that meant hopping on a local bus.

First up I checked the details on my phone. None of that back in the 1990s, it was all about having the local knowledge, knowing that the number 2 from Broadpark Road, would always appear at between six to seven minutes past the hour. Nowadays the internet told me where, when and how many teeth the bus driver would have (not many, but that's the state of bus drivers in Leeds.) I wandered down to the stop, where my true bus adventure began...

Hailing a bus
I last hailed a bus (signalled for it to stop, not applauded and cheered it for it's recent performances) about 15 years ago. Was it still the same? Do you stick your hand out, slightly raised? Was that something now from the Victorian age, and people would think I was trying to get a Hansom carriage to stop? Maybe the bus would just smash into my arm, mistaking my actions for some sort of gang sign, such are the mean streets these days. Thankfully, it was still the case, and the bus stopped with my hand very much intact. Either that, or I showed the right gang sign.

The cost
As the bus approached, I suddenly thought - have I actually got enough money? Now, I had about £5 in change in my pocket, but no frame of reference on cost. Like stamps, had buses now quadrupled in value? Would my £5 have got me to the end of the road? Did I need the right change? I used to get on the bus and say things like "75p please" and the bus driver would know that I knew the cost of my journey, but that he didn't need to know exactly where I was going - it was an unspoken respect between traveller and service provider. But today? No idea. The answer, rather undramatically, was £2.50.

The driver
Good, they haven't changed. Always a little strange, usually covered in tattoos and with an odd beard. And that was just the lady drivers (I did live in Devon). Anyway, this driver said something quite bizarre. Unsure of what stop I needed, I asked him "What's the best stop for the railway station?" to which he replied "Well, the bus...it goes down from the high street, then it heads down the hill, then it stops on Old Road". Why was he talking in the third person all the time, saying 'It' when referring to his bus? Surely he was in charge, but the way he talked sounded like the bus just went on its own and he was just a helpless passenger, only sitting right at the front. Maybe this was what buses were like now, sentient beings? No, it just turned out he had a strange turn of phrase. Shame. I thought it might have been something from the future we were all promised when we were young, and that it would have hovered as well.

The facilities
Buses were buses back then. Seats, the driver, windows, that was it really, and wheels of course (nearly forgot them). Nowadays it's like Minority Report. Flashing screens, priority seating for the elderly, fold up seats to store buggies, a mini bar, a robot butler, yep things have changed. What hasn't though is that great sign behind the driver that says "Do not distract the driver's attention and do not stand forward of this sign." Lovely, you can't improve on a classic like that, can you? And it still had wheels too (that song doesn't lie.)

The memories
Anyway, as I whiled away the 25 minutes on the bus, I remembered some of my favourite bus moments. The school bus, where people would get on, hand the return ticket out the window to a friend - who would then get on and show the same ticket. I'm pretty sure we bankrupted a few local bus firms in Devon. Or the rather bizarre phrase, that people sitting at the back of the bus would declare, stating "Back seat boys, make all the noise." Never really got to the bottom of that. And, as we pulled away from another bus stop, I remembered the time that having enjoyed a lunchtime pizza buffet with a girl, and waiting for a bus to arrive, I accidentally hugged her a little too tightly causing her to heimlich her entire lunch back up and onto the wall of the bus stop. Oh yeah, I was quite the smooth operator.

Anyway, I got to my destination and met up with the missus. She was delighted to see me (I didn't cause her to vomit, so I've clearly moved on since then) and she was even more impressed that I had got on a bus. So was I, I thought, I must write a blog about that I said.

So I did. And you just read it.