Post 6: FRIDAYS (this close to chaos...)

But I tell you, we are this close to the edge of chaos, most of the time.

It is a cool, windy day. I hail a bus and climb in.  I tap my oster card near the driver’s window and slide down the narrow aisle. I welcome the embrace of the chair, the warmth of the buses; I find comfort in the continuity of the  warmth, the recorded nnounements, the embrace of the chair, the one route, maybe a change at a single stop, back on again to another wrapping interior.

And then it happened.  As it has to, at some time.  A fight breaks out.

The bus I climb in to, up to, tap my travel card to ride on, decides it is going no further than the next stop. So it drives 500 metres, then stops; the driver commands, ‘everybody out’.  I have a monthly card, so for me it doesn’t matter. I've paid up for the whole day. But for others, it must matter. A lot.

I get out and very simply hop on another bus behind. One woman gets onto the second bus without tapping her card. The driver argues with her. She should have asked for a ‘transfer ticket’. She says the other driver didn’t’ offer. He says she has to have it. Another man pitches in. He argues on her behalf. It gets heated very quickly. I note here that the woman and the second man are of African origin, the driver is white. I wish the driver would just give over and say, ‘know what to do next time love’, but it is the end of a Friday. Is that why he won't, he can't, he has to hold on.

Someone comes down the internal stairs of the bus. He is covered in tattoos. He is a white man. He launches towards the young black man. F**ing get off the bus. I have to get somewhere.

The young black man counters. He is shouting. Don’t shout at me! says tattoo man. He repeats this: DON'T SHOUT AT ME, as if that is the worst thing in the world that could happen to him.  The shouting-at seems worse than the delay, has he forgotten the delay.  I see a black man and a black woman near me start to laugh. Why are they laughing. Tattoo man is upset, black woman and black man are so angry.

"Right, that's it, folks,"  the driver announces. "It's out of my hands. I’ve called the police. "  He opens the bus doors and most of us get off quick. In London, there is always an alterative within 15 minutes anyway.

What is intriguing is that my  last glimpse, back to the bus, is that the young black man, the black woman, and tattoo man, all remain on the bus, tattoo man making an angry phone call to whoever it was he was meant to meet, wherever he had to be.  All three (plus the driver) seemed to be waiting for the  police. It would have been so very simple to just have walked away. Why did they all just not walk away?



c. Z Soboslay 2015.