Impotence

On Monday night, I was waiting for a Number 88 bus at Vauxhall station. I waited for half an hour. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a huge amount of much time. It’s about the amount of time it takes to listen to Never Mind The Bollocks by The Sex Pistols. It’s the amount of time it takes to watch an episode of Keeping Up Appearances. But to me, pacing and tutting and cursing in the South London night, it was an eternity. The Number 88 is supposed to come every 8-10 minutes, and I was growing more and more angry.

Maybe it was because it was late at night and I was a bit tired. But when the bus eventually rounded the corner and pulled up, I was incandescent with rage. I was a victim of the highest order. I was the most wronged person since Steve Biko. The doors opened with such an arrogant swish, as if everything was absolutely fine. I climbed aboard and before I bleeped my Oyster card (essential to do this before paying for ultimate effect) I addressed the driver through the little holes in the plexi-glass. ‘I’ve been waiting for half an hour,' I said.

My tone of voice was stern, but controlled. I was containing my rage in a flimsy bag of reasonableness, straining at the seams. I was communicating the fact that I’m certainly not the type of person who would normally complain, oh no, only when my patience is STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT.

The thing that happened next sent me to the next level of self-righteous rage. I thought my anger had already reached its peak, but no – like Spinal Tap’s amplifiers, it seems I go all the way to 11. The driver’s response was so incredible, so unexpected, so unjustified. This is what he did:

Nothing.

And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. He didn’t apologise, he didn’t argue, he didn’t glare, he didn’t sigh, he didn’t even look at me. He didn’t show any sign that he had registered the fact that someone was speaking to him. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t be bothered to deal with an awkward customer, or that he was anxious to get going in order to catch up to his timetable. There’s no way he didn’t hear me. Frankly, my dear, he just didn’t give a damn.

So when I stomped up to the top deck, sitting at the front (always), I was already mentally composing my complaint to Transport For London. Not only did I have to wait an INORDINATE amount of time for my bus (I would use these capitals in the letter), when I attempted to register a complaint with the driver, he didn’t even ACKNOWLEDGE MY EXISTENCE. Are your drivers ROBOTS? Have you begun employing ANDROIDS? Is it now a prerequisite that one is LOBOTOMISED before being allowed to sit behind the wheel of a London bus? For the love of Christ, please tell me, whatever happened to CUSTOMER SERVICE?

Good.

Then. 

I imagined my letter being opened in the TFL complaints department (for I would send a letter, not an email, just to show that I was serious enough to pay for postage). It would probably be opened and read by a work experience kid, or at best an intern. Someone who probably cares even less than that driver. I saw the work experience boy (in my imagination he was male, fifteen years old, pale and spotty) opening my letter, scanning for the gist, seeing the furious capitals, and only getting halfway down the page before consigning my letter to the tray marked ‘nutters’.

And he’d be right. And the driver was also right to pay me absolutely no heed. And of course, I realised all this within about two minutes of sitting on the top deck of the Number 88 bus.

Impotent rage is a curious thing – because there is no visible target, it feeds upon itself. The injustice grows and grows until it forms an amorphous, organic blob of fury that ferments and fills your head, until it is finally punctured by reason. The air escapes and you wonder what the hell you were so angry about.

Public transport seems to be a common cause of this kind of rage. Of course it can be unreliable and expensive, and it’s possible that it’s generally poorly run. But the amount of energy we expend in being angry about it must be checked, or that blob of fury inside your head could be a permanent fixture, and before you know it you’re Richard Littlejohn.

Needless to say, I didn’t write the letter of complaint on this occasion, and the fact that I had to wait half an hour in Vauxhall bus station late at night has had absolutely no impact on my life. Just like my complaint had absolutely no impact on that driver. Ah, the sweet sensation of perspective.