The Joys of the 159

I have lived in Streatham now for almost a year.

There is nothing really very special about Streatham, it has an ice-skating rink, the usual high street shops, and an Odeon cinema, but the best thing about it I guess is the transport links. There are 3 train stations, Streatham, Streatham Common and Streatham Hill, and I have used all them at some point when I was living in Wallington and in Hackbridge. Oh, and there's a bus garage at the end of my street.

I never fully appreciated the joys of the bus garage until this past weekend, when I discovered - the 159 bus!!!

This bus, and its sister the 59, is the gateway to London. Fancy seeing a West End show? Take the 159. A concert (classical or modern?) Don't forget the 159. Art gallery? Yeah, there's the 159 (for both modern and traditional Art...). Shopping? Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, London Eye? Fancy restaurants? 159.

The old 159 Routemaster on its last journey

And its also the bus route which has the honour of having made the last general service Routemaster journey (Major Ken Livingstone had the Routemasters canned after saying that he wouldn't - typical politician - because they were not accessible for disabled passengers) on 9 December 2005. They still have Routemasters (the buses like from "On the Buses" - hop on / hop off, with a conductor as well as a driver) but they run on Heritage routes.

Actually, I could tell you a funny story about me and a Routemaster bus. When I lived in Bromley, I used to have to catch a train and 2 buses to get to work. So one morning, there I am, crack of dawn, in smelly old Peckham Rye (they have these incredibly foul-smelling butchers and fishmongers on the high street that start hosing out the floors - and the terrible smells - just as you walk past - what a pong!). Anyway, I was walking past the pongers, towards the bus stop - and I see the bus coming around the corner - so I start to run. The bus gets to the stop, takes on passengers, but the driver was a vindictive Nazi and despite seeing me running for the bus, takes off just as I reach the back platform. I lunge for the pole, fling myself on the platform and look like I'm going to make it, but he gives it a bit more revs (why, I don't know - we were going around a corner), and I full on lose grip of the pole and fully fall off the bus! Face down in the street... very embarrassing... lucky the only injury I sustained was to my pride...

But I digress. Back to Saturday, and the 159. So after I run all my errands in town I get the bus home. I'm sitting on the bus (up top and at the front, good view), minding my own business, happily listening to my 'pod (well, Zen), when a dude gets on and sits next to me. Nothing out of the ordinary there, until he suddenly starts gesturing to nobody in particular and mouthing words into space. I think that he can hear my music - I was listening to "Sweet Caroline"- and every time it gets to the 'ba ba ba' bit, he starts doing his thing. And then, when "Downtown" came on, he was almostly perfectly in time with the 'Downtown' bit. So I take my headphones off and check the volume - no, you can't hear it, its soft enough - there's nothing else for it, the dude is a wacko. Why me?

When I was in Vilnius I ended up catching the wrong bus to the city centre from the hostel, which detoured out into the sticks. On the bus gets the toothless family, mother, father and son, all smelling VERY badly of decomposing fish, and, as lucky would have it, they sat next to me. Oy! Talk about wanting to vom... Then the father starts talking to himself - well I'm not that sure it was to himself, he could have been speaking to the wife, but it was in Lithuanian and she wasn't answering - or giving any indication that she had heard him or that what he was saying was of any relevance to her... I can tell you I sure was glad to get off that bus...

Anyone else have interesting bus stories to tell?