ONE of our department’s wide-ranging daily discussions as we prepared to leave an almost empty office the other day revealed pretty much none of us wear a watch.
There were a variety of reasons, but mainly it came down to them being an irritant banging on the desk – an argument rather ruined by the bangles which live on my right wrist, albeit considerably thinned out from the full off-duty array – and the fact there is just no need.
If you want the time, you don’t need a watch. There’s some electronic device not too far away with the right time on it.
In my case that’s usually my phone , although bizarrely when freed from the constraints of work and a 9 to 5 routine while travelling, a watch did appear on the wrist that was not getting all cluttered up by bracelets.
And that’s generally what my phone gets used for, telling the time, an alarm and when really bored, checking Facebook, Twitter and e-mails. There’s some largely-forgotten apps on there but the one thing it rarely gets used as is a phone.
Sadly, the same can not be said about a surprisingly large number of the people who use the same bus as me in the mornings.
Anyone who has been paying attention for a while on this blog will know my long-serving car fell victim to the decluttering my life before heading off to Africa – it would have cost more to get through an MoT than it would make when sold, so off to the scrapyard it went. A sad farewell to an old friend.
Which has meant the vast majority of my journeys are by bus – at least to work, a couple of colleagues have somehow volunteered their services as a taxi service for the journey home. At very reasonable rates.*
That all adds up to plenty of time to listen to music and people watch. Or, increasingly in recent weeks, people listen.
If my phone rang on the bus, my reaction would be traditionally British – sheepishly answer it and get the whole thing over as quickly and quietly as possible, just in case anyone might overhear.
Even if it rings in the office, the process of answering it involves scurrying away to a quiet corner, not so much to avoid being overheard but more to avoid disturbing people (something that does not normally affect my behaviour in the office).
Would that were the case for some of my fellow passengers.
It had been an occasional irritant, particularly the guy who always seems to sit one row in front of me in the morning and does not so much talk on the phone as grunt or make some equally non-committal noise before launching in to some lengthy, shrill rant and cutting the conversation short.
And then there was the bloke who phones his office halfway through his journey to explain how he is stood waiting for a bus that has not arrived and that he will be a bit late.
Those are occasional examples which are as entertaining as they are irritating, but then came the girl who sat directly behind me on a journey home after a Sunday shift.
No idea what she was saying. Was listening to music and none of it was in any form of coherent sentences, just loud exclamations and laughter, all while eating her way through at least four packets of some unidentified food.
And then there’s the regular. The girl who parks herself in the front window seat upstairs and simultaneously goes through the three main tasks of her journey to work – eating breakfast, doing her make-up and conducting a lengthy, loud phone call, apparently to the same person each morning or to a variety of friends who all have babies.
The breakfast is normally something pastry-related, although she admitted to having a bag full of Kiwis to keep her going through the day. Presuming she means fruit as her bag is not big enough for a flock of birds or collection of small New Zealanders.
New treat for today's bus ride. Girl who talks loudly & endlessly on phone doing her hair at same time. Face full of hairspray #no10bus
— Rob Freeman (@robglaws) March 17, 2017
The make-up routine has progressed to doing her hair, no matter what impact it has on the rest of us – particularly the poor woman sat directly in the firing line of that hairspray.
But she still seems surprised when the bus hits a speed bump, despite having a clear view down a long, straight road through that large front window at the speed bumps which have a tendency not to move overnight.
Loud bus phone call very enlightening. Cheltenham races is "literally in Cheltenham" #no10bus
— Rob Freeman (@robglaws) March 17, 2017
But nothing can quite match the sheer inane nature of the conversation, filled as it is with such wonderful insights delivered with the conviction of someone confident nobody has delivered such information so insightfully before.
All delivered at a great volume, particularly when moaning about the noise being made by a crowded bus crammed with early racegoers heading for The National Hunt Festival in Cheltenham.
Phone call update: Spring is like summer but it's raining #no10bus
— Rob Freeman (@robglaws) March 17, 2017
Breaking bus phone call news: Bake Off to be presented by "that pale, long-haired bloke" and "some woman". Feel enlightened. #no10bus
— Rob Freeman (@robglaws) March 17, 2017
Think we are on to a different phone call. Barely drew breath #no10bus
— Rob Freeman (@robglaws) March 17, 2017
Can vouch for the volume as through all of this, my headphones are in but can still hear it. The volume is generally turned down a touch to avoid being overheard, but there is little choice (other than live tweeting the phone call) than to crank up the volume to become one of those irritating people who subject fellow passengers to their musical tastes.
And what they have been subjected to most recently has been the first dent in the F section of the A-Z journey through my iPod – from the expletives of NWA to Michael Kiwanuka.
We’ve had Fairytales (notably festive ones of the New York variety from The Pogues), Fakes (Plastic Trees from Radiohead – twice – and a version from Juliana Richer Daily, plus Tales of San Fransisco from Arctic Monkeys), taken a few Falls (On Me from REM, Falling Out by Veronica Falls who have been one of the discoveries of this journey and Falling, the Twin Peaks theme re-imagined by The Wedding Present), gone Far (Gone and Out by Jesus and Mary Chain), Fast (Car, Tracy Chapman) and bid Farewell Appalachia with Stornoway. Who we are about to bid farewell to.
And we had Faron Young.
Have already held forth in this blog about how the first side of Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen is damn near perfect (near perfect – perfection is reserved for side two of Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ocean Rain) and its opener still sounds magnificent almost 30 years on.
A classic, hugely overlooked pop tune, four in the morning or any time. Certainly beats listening to someone else’s phone calls..
*Free
