Anxiety No. 1173... Public Transport

Public transport falls into the following categories: planes, buses and taxis. Trains are public, but only occasionally used for transport. The rest of the time they are an excuse to eye-ball electronic notice boards and make irate phone calls to loved ones you suddenly feel you may never see again.

Airports are like book-ends on either side of your holiday that let you know when your allocated slot of fun is to begin and when it must come to an end. As everybody is operating in a different time zone, the rules of time do not apply in airports. That is why children sleep while adults scream and cry, and every single person’s bag is ‘always the last one out’.

Buses would be pleasant if it wasn’t for the fact you have to share them with other people. The earlier the bus you get, the weirder the other people are. As with all public transport, giving up your seat for an elderly passenger is correct etiquette. Unlike all other public transport, it is not etiquette for the driver to wait for the elderly to sit before they pull away. Despite this bad-mannered disposition, no one has ever left a bus without thanking the driver for all that they have done for them.

Taxis represent the pinnacle of public transport, because you public can dictate exactly where they go. They are also the only mode of public transport that will happily wait for you at a cash machine. Taxi drivers all seem like odd characters, because most of them are so tired of making small talk that they are deliberately eccentric.

Some of the most interesting conversations with taxi drivers can be instigated by asking them whether of not they can ‘relate’ to the character of Travis Bickel.