Buses and belonging
Posted by a Contributor in November's Magazine
At last, I belong here! It all happened on a recent Monday afternoon, as important events tend to (Bob Geldof being unhappy; weekend hangovers starting to kick in; Ben Fogle’s Escape in Time on BBC2). As the number 49 bus lumbered around the corner, I noticed something remarkable about it: it was a double-decker. Never in all my 49-catching days had this occurred. This in itself did not mean I now belonged to Edinburgh; it was the fact I had noticed and cared enough, even, to text Mrs Pen Portraits the words ‘Seen. It. All. Now’. (She presumed I’d caught the bloke that lives opposite drying himself in front of the bedroom window again, but that’s by the by). Once you start to care about LRT, well that’s when this city has got you underneath its confusingly contoured skin.
On arrival here seven years ago, I was immediately transfixed by how much locals knew about bus routes. Ask anyone how best to get to, say, Silverknowes and it’d be ‘37 this’, ‘16 that’ and ‘why’? Places didn’t have directions or geographical locations, just bus numbers, so that when I asked where the Mining Museum was the answer came ‘you get a 29’. Or when I enquired as to what Crammond was like people would reply: ‘a nightmare to get to’.
After a while, I became convinced that this particularly Edinburgh version of The Knowledge was no fluke: it was, in fact, being taught in schools. All across Midlothian, children as young as eight were being instructed in how to get best use of a Day Saver and in the nuances of the strange non-queue queue system that seems to somehow work at bus stops here. By the age of eleven, pupils were being dropped blindly somewhere across town and told to make their way back to class using no more than two buses. By sixteen, if any child had not been on all routes – including the lesser-spotted 21 – they would be exiled to Dalkeith.
The Bat Phone to mum
In most living rooms they sit there, old, ignored and left behind. I talk not of grandmothers at Christmas, but of the humble landline. The mobile phone has enjoyed an emphatic victory over it among an entire generation. Very few people under thirty even give their home number out any more. Indeed, landlines only ever get used for chats with Mums like a version of the Downing Street to White House emergency hotline only with more talk of Ethel next door’s bunions. In our house, when it rings we glance at one another with the kind of horrified look formerly reserved for midnight chapping of the door by police officers or my weird cousin Kenny. I still remember our childhood numbers, mind: everyone from our borstal does. Seamlessly picking up on the phone theme: lately I’ve been getting exasperated with people moaning about call centre queues, options and outsourcing. I need some kind of system whereby I can give them buttons to select should they wish to proceed. Press 1 if your diatribe is about muzak, press 2 if it’s about the cost of the call and press 3 if you’re masquerading slightly racist views with a pretend point about commonsense and will soon say, “I mean, I’d be the same with a broad Geordie, honest.”
IKEA flea circuses
Disconcerting scenes round our way: the postman’s only gone and taken a three-week holiday. I’ve had number sixteen’s mail twice, and Cathy up the road found Paula’s free Gillette Venus sample in with hers. People are livid, taking to the streets in their slippers to shake their heads and furtively leaning to pick-up red rubber bands as if extracting single hairs from a murder scene. The poor stand-in has no chance what with curtains twitching like IKEA flea circuses and dogs sensing new, whistling, red-shirted meat. The whole neighbourhood is in chaos. Tough times indeed but we’ll pull through.
The yo-yoing of time
There’s only one way to avoid the creep of mild Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that’s turning the clocks forward when they’re supposed to go back. No one really understands the whole thing anyway, and twice a year most of us have to use our landlines to ask our Mums which one it is. Just think how early you’ll be for everything. I think. No, is that right? Because if it was dark at seven it’ll now be…oh I don’t know anything anymore.
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