We shall soon be arriving at Somewhere Very Dull

No, not Brexit. No chance. Bus announcements, and three observations based on recent travels.

1) Recorded audible announcements, while helpful to the minority, are an intrusion for the majority. Especially if the announcer sounds stroppy, officious, has a weird accent, or thinks that railway stations are called train stations. The technology may be available, but does not necessarily have to be used. If so, why can’t it be focused directly – narrowcasted - to those equipped with properly tuned gadgets? A broadcast to everyone isn’t generally necessary, unless something very unusual (a diversion) or potentially calamitous (an approaching Duke of Edinburgh) is about to occur.

2) If we must have announcements on buses, they should be useful and meaningful. Something like “next stop, town centre”, or “the High Street”, or “the market”. If you are in a rural area and are coming into a small and unfailingly delightful village, you want to hear “Groping Sideways” or “Farting Slightly”, or whatever its name. You don’t want to hear “Boggins Farm” or “Arthur Daley Mansions” or the name of some small thoroughfare of poxy little townhouses that went up last week, “Stoat Droppings View” or whatever, that nobody has ever heard of. Neither do you want to be told what the next stop is, just yet, if it’s four miles away. Nor, if you’re travelling for miles and miles along a very long road, say Watling Street, do you want to be told that “the next stop will be Watling Street”.

3) Again, if we must have these announcements, we don’t want too much of an anticipatory build-up. Not too much preamble and poetry. We don’t need to be teased that “we shall very shortly be arriving in the vicinity of Chlamydia Avenue. Alight here for the Dorothy Clutterice Academy”, or made to get all worked up because “in a moment or two we will be pulling into Salmonella Gardens. Unless it’s Wednesday you can get off here for the Smegma Research Institute”. Least of all do we need a breathless declaration that “we are now commencing our final approach to Horatio Bagwash Crescent”.

If you’re a regular, you’ll know already. If, like me, you’re an old geezer with a bus pass, you won’t be able to stand the excitement – especially as you know very well there’s absolutely no chance that “we are now stopping right outside A&E”.