A tragic farewell to the bendy bus.

I was first introduced to the magic of the bendy bus when I moved to London a few years ago and had no money on my Oyster; "it's ok", my friend assured me, "we'll take the free bus".  In my extreme naivety I believed him and hopped on the 73.  Where I realised it wasn't free.  It was in fact a choice - a choice between paying and settling down for a relaxing journey, or bypassing the Oyster reader and sitting in fear until the relief of the bus stop came.  Obviously on this occasion I chose the latter.  And had an encounter with a ticket man.  Fortunately he was the worst London ticket controller I have ever come across and didn't have his techno Oyster reader with him, we just waved our cards at him and he was happy enough.

Yesterday I was given some horribly upsetting news.  The 29 bendy is no more.  It is a double decker.  Criminal.  I have spent much of my life on that route and now it just won't be the same.  The 29 day route, the N29 night route, even one massively dedicated time spent on the N29 to GO to work.  Hardcore.  Nightbuses should never be experienced sober.  It's a horrendous realisation of what you usually look like at that time of night.  Dire.

One poor sod I watched attempt to get on a nightbus was clearly hoping to do the bendy bus backdoor fare dodge.  Only it wasn't a bendy.  The driver slammed the backdoors on him.  He fell out.  I laughed.  It was brilliant entertainment.  I suppose karma came back to bite me though.  I have experienced the tube door squeeze.  Jumping onto a train I was frozen mid-flight as my backpack got stuck in the doors and I recoiled yo-yo stylie into the door-backpack sandwich.  It's not fun.  Especially when you're by yourself and have no-one to laugh it off with.  And other passengers have to yank you through the doors because they refuse to bounce back and persist in jamming you between them.  You can't even thank your rescuers and hurry on your way, you have to spend the next few painful minutes sharing a carriage, knowing that they think you're an absolute tit.  You also want to acknowledge the fact that you know you're a tit and maybe should have waited the one extra minute for the next tube, rather than taking a leap of faith through the doors at the warning beep, but you can't laugh, because you're by yourself, and would just look like a deranged tit.  Rather than simply, a tit.  Which I think is much better.

One particularly wet day when there was near torrential rain in good old England, a wonderful bus driver stopped by the side of a road I was waiting to cross and wound down his window.  He handed me an umbrella!  Wow.  What a lovely man.  Puts your faith right back into humankind.  It wasn't his.  It belonged to some probably now very wet bugger who'd left it on the bus, but a beautifully kind gesture all the same.  So thanks Mr Bus Man, and thank you bendy 29 for all your memories and bendy N29 for all your memory lapses.