City Bus Driver

Hospitals are just cities in soft shoes. The traffic’s slower, but it never stops, and no one’s indicating. I’ve been spending more time in hospital lately. Not as a patient, just visiting. One of those stretches that creeps from the odd evening to most days of the week, until you start recognising the vending machine repair guy and knowing which café has the strong tea. When you’re in that long enough, not in crisis, not in control, just there, you start to notice things. Patterns. Flows. Familiar strangers in uniforms. The way the place moves. And what struck me, more than anything, is that hospitals are just another kind of traffic system. A city of motion. Only instead of horns and headlights, it’s rubber soles and trolley wheels. There’s a certain choreography to it all. You can tell the staff from the visitors within two seconds. The staff move with purpose, straight lines, no hesitation. They walk like they’ve already made three decisions you haven’t caught up with. The visitors...

The weather’s warm, the schools are out, and everyone’s forgotten how doors work. Here’s how to keep your bus moving (mostly) forward. Top Tips for Managing Summer Crowds on the Bus Summer brings out the best in people, by which I mean their full volume, their worst planning, and their complete inability to stand behind a yellow line. If winter is for head-down commuting, summer is a circus, and the bus is the main tent. Here's how I survive the season without combusting or being mistaken for a tour guide. 1. Open the doors like you mean it, but only when you’ve assessed the species outside Approach the stop with caution. Not for traffic, for what’s waiting. You've got the dad who's already pointing where everyone should sit. The kid who's mid-meltdown about a dropped Calippo. The teenager pretending not to know the rest of them. And hovering off to one side, the wild card: the preboarder. You know the one. Does a wee side-step shuffle as if they're going to let oth...

It started, as these things often do, with something small. A mark. A smell. A hesitation no louder than a breath. The kind of moment you barely register, until it turns into something else entirely.  By the time the bus pulled away, the story had already begun to write itself. Just not the one anyone meant to tell. Three seconds. One shadow. A hundred headlines. There are moments on this job that last no longer than a blink, but echo for weeks. A pensioner's awkward glance. A hesitation at the step. A mark on the seat that might be nothing, or might be something. You weigh it. In real time. With forty people behind you. No script. No time to consult the manual (because there isn’t one). Just a quiet flicker of dread and the question no driver wants to ask:  If I’m wrong, what happens next? I wasn’t there. But I’ve been there. I’ve seen shadows that looked like stains, and stains that looked like shadows. I’ve had the smell of spilled cider haunt a bus for a whole shift, only ...

It was the last run of the shift, the sun was setting, and the air inside the bus was thick with the scent of teenage rebellion and something far worse. Between the Bluetooth beats, fruity fog and an unidentified chemical weapon left behind by a pensioner, I found myself refereeing a strange kind of peace treaty, with vape clouds as our only line of defence. School’s out, vapes are in, and one mystery stinker nearly derailed the lot. A tale of teamwork, tolerance, and a tactical haze. There’s a certain breed of chaos that only arrives when school’s out and the sun can’t decide if it’s setting or just sulking. You know the kind, restless energy, hormonal banter, and that dangerous combination of boredom and Bluetooth. I’d clocked the group as soon as they boarded. Usual weekend suspects. Faces I could sketch from memory, fair dodging routines rehearsed like a school play. One of them tried the classic "left my pass in my cousin’s car" routine. I gave him a look that said, “So...

A mysterious rider boards with a quiet grin and a coin in their pocket. Something’s being celebrated, but not out loud. They boarded like they’d just been knighted at the kitchen sink, fresh-faced, wide-eyed, carrying the kind of quiet victory that doesn’t need an audience but accepts one all the same. Not loud, not showy, just… unmistakably someone who woke up today already proud of themselves. There’s a kind of walk folk do when they’ve already won the day before breakfast. It’s not quite a strut, too self-aware for that, but there’s a bounce to it. Like the pavement’s giving them a round of applause. That’s what boarded this morning. Mid-morning, not quite rush, not quite calm. Buzzing with something invisible but important. They tapped on, grinning at nobody in particular, and made the kind of eye contact that tells you they’ve got good news and absolutely no plans to keep it to themselves. I gave them the usual nod, half polite, half do we know each other? …and they leaned in slig...

You Don’t Need to Be in the Cab to Feel It: A crash like that echoes through every depot. We weren’t there. But we know the weight of the wheel. I’m not a double deck driver. I wasn’t there. And I won’t claim to know what happened near Eastleigh yesterday, not with investigations still ongoing. But like a lot of us in the seat, I felt that cold drop in my gut. There’s something about seeing one of ours, uniformed, behind the wheel, doing the job, caught in a headline that starts with “crash” and ends with “students injured.” You feel it. Not because you know the full story (you don’t), but because you know the pressure, the road, the weight of that responsibility. Most of us go our whole careers without facing anything like that. We hope to keep it that way. But that doesn’t stop your mind from going there. Doesn't stop you wondering, What would I do? Would I have seen it coming? Could I have changed anything? The truth is, buses are heavy things. We drive them through tight spaces...

Once you’ve clocked 9 hours in uniform, even the vending machine starts judging you. It’s not just driving time that drags, it’s everything in between. Here’s why I stick to 39 hours and refuse overtime, no matter the pressure. Introduction I’m three months into a 12-month rethink of my overtime habits. After a steady drip of minor incidents, not enough to make headlines, but enough to make me think twice, I’ve realised piling on extra hours isn’t just about padding the pay packet. It’s about keeping my focus sharp, my sanity intact, and most importantly, everyone on the road safe. I know the desk staff might be throwing me the occasional side-eye, wondering why I’m not jumping at every chance to work overtime. If only money grew on trees, I’d be first in line. But unfortunately, it doesn’t. What does grow (or at least what I’m fiercely guarding) is my peace of mind, and a scrap of sanity after years of long shifts and minimal downtime. I’m at that point in life where I’d rather enjoy ...

First came the fallout, Musk and Trump turned on each other in public. Then a SpaceX rocket exploded, and the media called it a glitch. But on my morning bus route, the passengers see it for what it really was, the opening salvo in a quiet coup against parallel power. The Feud Ignited, Then the Rocket Blew, A Quiet Coup Unfolds on My Bus Route I drive a single-deck bus through the city’s arteries every morning. The same streets, the same stops, the same faces, but lately, something’s changed. The hum of the engine and the rattle of the wheels can’t drown out the murmur swelling in the air. The passengers no longer just talk about football scores or the weather; their conversations pulse with something heavier, a story unfolding before us, right under our noses, masked by spectacle and smoke. It began not with the rocket, but with a rupture in the fragile alliance between two titans of disruption, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The feud, as raw as it was public, ignited in June 2025, sprea...

It's only May, but the temperature's rising faster than a late-running double-decker on a downhill. Uniform rules say keep the tie on, but sweat says otherwise. This is a tale of shirt-soaked rebellion, heat hallucinations, and the silent hope of a blessed company-wide "tie amnesty." The Great Tie Rebellion There’s hot. There’s “cabin fan blowing lukewarm soup at your face” hot. And then there’s May 2025. The kind of heat that melts the grip off your steering wheel and has you checking the seat fabric to make sure you haven’t fused to it. Now, I love my job. But when the forecast reads like a frying pan’s autobiography and my tie is still choking me like a corporate python, the uniform policy starts to feel a bit... ambitious. According to the Rulebook of Busland™ (page 47, subsection "Neck-Based Formalities"), ties are to be worn until a date so deep into the calendar, the sun will have already bleached the road markings. But the company, bless their cotton...

Despite repeated training, strict policies, and genuine commitment to safety, minor bus incidents persist across the globe. These aren't just lapses in discipline, they’re signs of how complex and high-pressure public transport really is. When people and probability meet in motion, even well-designed systems can falter.  Exploring the Limits of Caution in a Complex, Fast-Moving Environment Across the public transport industry, a great deal of effort is invested in reducing incidents on board buses. From passenger falls on internal platforms to lapses in driving precision, the commitment to safety is clear. Training is frequent, safety messages are repeated, and drivers are consistently reminded to prioritise care over punctuality, especially when it comes to vulnerable passengers. Yet despite this shared emphasis on caution, incidents still happen. Some involve passengers losing balance before reaching a seat. Others may involve momentary lapses in spatial judgement or minor miscal...

A Supreme Court ruling. A laminated headline. And a furious debate over womanhood... on a Thursday morning city bus. When national policy hits the Number X12, guess who gets caught in the crossfire? Spoiler: it’s the one with the steering wheel and no legal training. The Bus Stop Becomes a Battlefield I was three minutes early at the Exchange stop, which, in bus-driver time, is essentially a miracle, schedulers must have made some improvements to the timetable. The clouds were low, the queue was long, and Carol was armed, with a newspaper clipping, laminated and annotated like it was a sacred scroll. “Driver,” she said, climbing aboard like she’d been summoned to Westminster, “are trans women still allowed on this bus? Because the Supreme Court says…” I’m Just the Driver, Not the Department for Defining Women Now, I don’t sit in the Lords, I don’t wear ermine, and I didn’t rewrite the Equality Act over my tea this morning. I drive the bus. That’s all. But Carol had clearly made me the ...

Forget about Wall Street’s precious VIX, try driving a bus through rush hour and see how real volatility feels. While traders panic over market whispers, I’m out here dodging cyclists, gritting my teeth through green lights that flip amber in an instant, and bracing for a pensioner’s precarious balance on my top step. When it comes to unpredictability, the stock market’s a toddler’s tantrum compared to what happens when you’re behind the wheel. Forget the VIX, Try Driving a Bus Through This Lot They call it the Fear Index. The VIX. Wall Street’s precious little pulse monitor. A gentle flutter in inflation and it faints. A whisper of tariff talk, and it needs a lie down in a dark room with chamomile tea. It's cute, really, watching traders panic because someone mentioned “macroeconomic headwinds” on CNBC. Meanwhile, I’m trying to merge into a roundabout with a school run coming from all directions and a pensioner standing unbraced on my top step, gripping nothing but sheer optimism....

You can be as posh as you like, strut around in designer clothes with your fluffy dog by your side, but the moment you start swinging a bag of dog shit like it’s the latest fashion accessory, you've officially crossed into another level of madness. The Poshest Poo Bag You'll Ever See Alright, listen up, because I’ve just had one of those moments that makes you question everything. You know the kind, where you’re just minding your own business, driving your bus, doing your job, and then something so bloody ridiculous happens you have to remind yourself that you’re not in a sitcom. So, it's a beautiful Saturday afternoon, right? The sun’s out, birds are chirping, and the whole world is pretending that everything’s perfect. And what do I get to see through the window of my bus, as I drive down the road like the seasoned professional I am? This woman. This woman who looks like she’s just stepped out of a Cosmopolitan magazine. Full-on, head-to-toe elegance. The kind of woman wh...

When the markets crash, I don’t need Bloomberg to tell me. I see it on the faces at the bus stop. Tariffs go up, and suddenly everyone’s carrying packed lunches and stress. The billionaires aren’t panicking, they’re shopping. Economic Repercussions You can always tell when something’s up in the economy. Before it hits the headlines, it hits the bus. The bloke who used to chat about upgrading his car? Now asking if we’ve got any driver vacancies. The regular who used to buy a coffee for the ride? Cold flask. Same coat. Worn face. The fare dodgers are sneakier. The pensioners quieter. Everyone’s just… a little more tired. And me? I’m still driving the same route, dodging potholes the council can’t afford to fix, thanks to budget cuts brought on by yet another economic shake-up dressed in red, white, and blue. This time, it’s Trump’s tariff circus again. Round two. "America First" they said. More like markets last, small businesses folded, and guess who’s still getting richer? Y...