Dear my beloved O.A.P’s,
My main complaint is about buses. Yes you get all these horror stories about yob’s setting their dog’s loose on the top deck and murdering a few children, but the elderly are the real facists of the line 280.
Firstly, you really think you own the place. Most importantly you think you own the lower deck. Now I know what you’re thinking, teenagers belong on the TOP deck, where they can rebel and throw things and smoke and scream. Well guess what, I want to sit on the lower deck, with a book and maybe sleep just like you. The looks I recieve when one of you get’s on, flashes an “over 80” card with no need to pay and then glares at me like my seat, amist all the empty ones has been pre-paid and reserved for by you, can only be explained as murderous.
Secondly, speaking of seats, why do you have to make the issue of the seats “reserved for the elderly and less able to stand” so difficult? If I can, I don’t sit in them, but sometimes there comes a need. Because quite often none of you will sit in the seats reserved for you leaving it the only free option, which is really not what they are there for. If someone “elderly or less able to stand” then comes on to the bus, I am given the impossible task of deciding, “are they old and wobbly enough, or not”? It seems I can’t get it right! Stay put and the whole bus will start tutting, stand up and 9 times out of 10 the pensioner in front of me will feign surprise before scowling, insulted that I thought they would need a seat when they are so spritely and do pilates twice a week.
If I manage to get a downstairs seat, with no trouble. The whole journey is just a stressful as if I had sat on the upper deck with some male youths commenting on my chest and throwing cigarette butts at me. You elderly do this in an entirely different way. I have given up trying to make conversation. Only you could make “good afternoon” sound like you were about to club me over the head with a blunt intrument. And even if I try and sit quietly, a sneeze or a light cough always bubbles up and I’m met with evil glares, and the most silent panic that exists on this planet as you all whip out your hankies and scowl at me: a light cough for me, flu and six months catching the luxicars minibus to the doctors for you. How could I be so selfish? Have I not seen that flu advert on bbc 2 that crops up about midday? No. I have been at school. Doing A levels. But they are alot easier now than they were in your day so I why would you sympathise?
