I feel a new terror when travelling on the bus, at least the 113 – and it’s because of the video cameras that observe and relay pictures of the passengers. There’s a screen placed just above the stairs, so while you wait on the bus as it inches through the clot of traffic that always builds up at the lights just before St John’s Wood Tube station, you are offered several vistas, shown in rotation, of your fellow “customers” (as Transport for London whimsically calls us) looking bored, or dopey, or fretful. People don’t look their best on these cameras but, even knowing this, I was unprepared for the shock I got when I caught a glimpse on the screen of a little old man waiting to get off and realised it was me.
Do not be deceived by the image that adorns this column: should you wish for a more accurate one, I suggest you find a bottle of Tipp-Ex and paint the hair white. Tempus fugit and all that, but these days it seems as though it’s running for its life. Yet, every so often, it loops round and meets you coming back the other way, as occurred when my mother announced that she had made a dentist’s appointment for us both the other day. I don’t know about you but I think 50 is too old to be going to the dentist with your mother, so I feigned illness and cancelled in the morning. Also, it was raining. It seems to be doing a lot of that at the moment.
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