“Erm, excuse me … sorry to trouble you but, well … would you mind?”
The old fellow had turned to the passenger behind and was twiddling an invisible radiogram. He looked like Private Godfrey from Dad’s Army. How could you argue with Private Godfrey?
The young lad sat on the back seat tugged out his earphone, nodded without comment, and the nerve-snarling tinny beat ceased with the jab of a finger. A meditative hush settled in the single decker. The handful of passengers went back to staring at the darkening streets of South Leeds and avoiding unnecessary human contact.
How nice, I thought. How civilised. A lovely example of how a polite, softly spoken assertion of simple manners can alter a potentially annoying situation for the better. I wished I’d been the one to summon up the courage to reinforce the unspoken rules that ought to prevail in shared social spaces, but frankly the noise leaking from the kid’s iPod was barely noticeable above the whine of the engine. Still, I was glad we were all happy again.
Then it began. First as a shrill warble, then as a flat, high pitched rapid double note. Finally, the noise resolved into something akin to a strangled parakeet attempting a show-tune in a cellar-full of radon gas.
Private Godfrey was whistling.
Not only was he whistling, he was smiling and nodding at us, as if to acknowledge how fortunate we were to be graced by his performance.
I have to admit his performance showed admirable skill – at least compared to pushing the button on an iPod – but the assumption that not only would we tolerate this aural assault we’d actually enjoy it was mind-boggling in its audacity. There is a reason whistling has gone the way of rickets, pit ponies and trench warfare; it’s called progress. The iPod was invented so we didn’t have to listen to some old duffer do his rendition of Danny Boy, and we have the shuffle so we don’t have to listen to someone actually shuffling. The only way this could get worse was if the guy opened a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch and removed his teeth.
Fortunately I was getting off at the next stop. Private Godfrey could pester his fellow passengers to his hearts content, I could escape, to silence, sanity and the empty streets.
It got me thinking about something that came out of the Metro Cultural Conversation we had last week. Everyone there was clear that improving public transport was not just a technical, mechanical or logistic problem; the main problem with public transport is not the transport, it’s the public. How do we get them to behave better? As Oasis once profoundly commented, how long’s it gonna be/ before we get on the bus/ and cause no fuss/ get a grip on yourself/ it don’t cost much?
My solution is radically simple. Old school manners. Get a grip on yourself.
Keep your feet on the floor, your eyes in your head, and your hands where we can all see them. If you have a song in your heart, ants in your pants or wind trapped in the nether parts of your person, do the decent thing and keep it in. Restrain yourself till you get to the sanctuary of your own home. Do what you like there, but keep it off the bus.
Especially the 481.
And, Mr Godfrey. You are excused.
After we were talking about this the other day I started compiling a list in my head of the things that give me Bus Rage
(what? that’s a real thing!) and compared notes in the pub.
Top 5 are: people who smell, people who eat, people who give their bag a seat when the bus is full, people who cannot control the volume on their phone/mp3 player/iPad.
Worse than this though are the people who sit on the top deck and smoke, and people who abuse the driver. Sometimes bus drivers are not very nice people, but let’s face it it’s not a very nice job!
So, how do we shift behaviour? There seems to be a consensus about what behaviour is objectionable but very few solutions.
If it really is the case that people are the problem how do we get them to behave better … or should we all give up and buy a car (or a bike if yr a nice liberal.)
I’ve been on public transport in Europe where excessive noise and eating is subject to a fine. It sounds quite extreme but penalties are usually in place for unacceptable behaviour.
My niggle is taking children in the quiet coach on trains – groups of them! I don’t mind one as some children really can be quiet for 2 hours. And people who come in and laugh and joke around, are they oblivious to the signs plastered all around the carriage? Or every stop when the announcer says “coach B is situated at the front if the train and is our designated quiet coach”? I just want a quiet journey, is that too much to ask?
Whilst we’re in trains, I don’t think drinking alcohol should be allowed on trains. Numerous times i have witnessed young children with grandparents with their reserved seating forcibly surrounded by young/middle aged lads heading to one of the cities for a night out and they are drinking and playing drinking games; and the children are visibly scared! In Canada it is illegal to drink alcohol on public transport, and rightly so. How long is the typical train journey? Is it vital that alcohol is consumed during that time? Can it wait so that the journey is pleasant for the other passengers?
It’s not the drinking that’s the problem anyway – it’s the being a dick. And what about people who are pissed before they get on the train?
I suspect even in Canada you can drink on public transport. Do the airlines wait until you are over US airspace, what about Via rail – some of those journeys are several days.
Even some of the journeys you can get in the UK are a fair distance. Leeds to Exeter takes a while, for example. So maybe you say “you can drink on long distance services” .. but the train from Exeter calls at Wakefield before Leeds, so that would be confusing at best.
At least the US have the right idea. I saw one guy, who had probably spent the entire 6 hours waiting for the (seriously delayed) train in the bar. He got on, was a twat and was thrown off into the hands of the police at the next station.
As usual the call is to “ban booze” because it’s seen as a simpler alternative to the actual problem, which is “stop people being assholes.”