Poetic Licence

An image makeover is being mooted for buses and bus travel. John Prescott this week announced a range of new measures to persuade motorists to abandon their cars and take the bus

Our New Love The Bus

Let's take the 78 in early winter

When all the oaks are turning gold

From Tenpenny Hill to Thorrington

In mid-November sunlight after rain

And kiss outside the Co-op here

Till 4.16... and then 4.36...

THEN AT THESE MINUTES PAST EACH HOUR

Until the buses all stop running

A full hour short of closing time.

From now on sweetheart, it is only us

The driver and that gum-chewing girl

Who meets her mates at Brightlingsea

A shivering, knackered office cleaner,

An old bloke back from seeing a son in jail.

And some kid talking draw-deals on a phone

For these will be our fellow travellers,

The very young, the aged and the car-less

And out along the estuary at tea-time

The headlamps dash the fields and lanes

And rake the stops where no one waits

Who ever graduated to a car

DO NOT STAND FORWARD OF THIS POINT

Past a pub, a sign, a level-crossing

The new estate lit up like Lucozade

Deserted, but for hooded boys on bikes

A bell, a groan of brakes, a hiss of doors

Then back onto the rabbit-splattered road

The rattling draughty taxi's now our own

So let us take this 78 in winter

While all the world is busy driving home

One to each car and cursing at the traffic

Because apart from us and all these ghosts,

34 SEATED AND NINE STANDING

We may well find at last, that we're alone.