On The Bus

A little chat with someone I half know

“Julie!”

A familiar figure says as I board the bus.

I enjoy the way she speaks my name - with early 60’s exuberance, the way I convince myself, it was meant to be uttered - jubilantly, forcibly injecting a sense of occasion. The way people addressed Julie London or Julie Christie, before ‘Julie’ became overused and common as sparrows.

I wish I could tell you her name but I don’t know it. She’s told me on more than one occasion but my ability to retain names is patchy. Let’s call her Jenny.

She is stout and her legs bow, around 65 but her white curly hair makes her appear a little older. As she takes her seat beside me, I am reminded of a stocky sheep or well fed West Highland Terrier. The bead of her eyes holds drama whilst her jaw swings out like a slightly vicious Punch and Judy puppet.

I have many of these people in my life. Those I pocketed as fascinating buttons at bus stops. Maybe you have them too? People you have never been friends with, worked with but somehow they rolled to you anyway. They appear randomly in public places to give you the latest instalment on family matters and medical ailments. Updates are served speedy as Pot Noodles - a slurry of rehydrated spice and colour to hurriedly swallow and keep you going til next time.

Jenny once told me she is from Brighton. In my head, Brighton is full of rich old gay fellas with camp posh voices - Lennies and Kennies, not Jennies.

Jenny talks the way people on ‘Eastenders’ do when they visit the seaside. I am transported to strolling a pier as she tucks into jellied eels, pie and mash or whatever southerners eat on day trips.

Jenny’s voice arrives in my ears as a windswept full skirt. It fans and lifts before being sternly pulled back in.  I befriended her purely on the merit of this and the accompanying animation, deciding that as I must await the bus, it might be entertaining to engage her sideshow.

“Cold isn’t it?”

I remark, in true British tradition.

“We ’aven’t done badly really so far though, ’ave we? Saying that…. I ’aven’t been out since Christmas Day. Not been well enough to…..How are you anyway then Julie? How’s your son doing?”

Words are chucked out liberally as fish food, a dispersal of pleasantries to get to the subject she really wants to discuss, her grandson.

“She’s ’avin’ a right time of it, my daughter you know, with her eldest….”

“Oh”

“In my day, all parents ’ad to worry about was David Bowie - ’im dressing up in funny clothes and make up”

She cranes and her walking stick taps the floor at my feet.

“Not like now……oh no! More to it now…kids today…...”

Her eyes black grape in their sockets, her expression reminiscent of startle on a Hitchcock poster.

I smile sympathetically, not fully understanding where this is going.

“The stuff they’re finding on their phones, Julie! She took it from ’im in the end ’cause ’ee kept ’iding it from ’er so she knew there was stuff ’ee didn’t want ’er to see. Julie ….she was disgusted! Sexually explicit things from the internet.  And then they want to act it all out, don’t they? 14 ’ee is, Julie! 14!”

She says my name often.

“Shows me a photo of his girlfriend ’ee does, at the dinner table. I said…..BUT SHE’S IN HER BRA! No she’s not, Nan, ’ee sez, that’s a top, but I swear Julie it was a cami top, you know…..like a bra. Barely covered ’er! I sez I don’t care what you call it, I don’t want to see it….especially at the dinner table!”

She pauses.

“I think this sort of thing is happening a lot.”

I offer, remembering stories others have told me, secretly relieved my own son doesn’t yet own a phone.

“Well….he’s gone living with his dad now anyway. Got what he wanted……..that’s what he wanted, never got on with the new boyfriend…….”

I nod.

“School got involved. The teachers don’t know what to do about it all you know. Not just ’im. All of them! They’ve never experienced anything like it before……All this sex! It’s a tidal wave…… another pandemic!”

I flinch as I hear ‘another pandemic’.

At the time of the alleged ‘pandemic’, I wondered if we’d fall out. Many of my ‘bus stop regulars’ grew socially awkward, distant over my refusal to wear a mask. Sandra (one of those council estate matriarch types) even became confrontational! Although I know Jenny felt differently to me about things, I’m pleased we retained our connection.

The little bus pulls on her street and she gathers together her assortment of carrier bags and overflowing groceries, steadying herself to get off. I wave goodbye.

Sometimes I see her daughter and kids in town. Have passed them since they were tots in pushchairs. When I do, I wonder if she realises all I know of her - her chequered love life and fall outs with her mother, her old eating disorder, the various diagnoses of the kids…..

Maybe the daughter has a potted history of me too, (although with Jenny I never really get a word in edgeways to relay much.)

It strikes me that some stories are meant to reach us even though we don’t personally know the characters concerned.

I can only think it’s for one reason only.

To make us find a little less alone in the world and remind us that no family - no adult nor child - is perfect. That life can be a struggle and we’re all winging it.

When I see her daughter on the bus, I always smile.

It’s only polite.

We’re fellow passengers, after all.

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Happy for all you bring to my table, anyway, just by being here :)