THE BRITISH THREAD II

Quite a few English people must have been surprised by the mediterranean temperatures today, since they underestimated the effect of such temperatures/sunshine and the amount of drunken beer related to their behaviour and odour. (I really feared to get a relapse on the bus when returning this evening )

It's been pissing it down for the past four weeks, this is the best bit of weather we've had for a while.

Well, I paid quite a lot to get that arranged for our holidays!

You arranged to be surrounded by a bunch of red faced, drunken, smelly locals?

It seems that this was the rub when I made the deal ...

Well as long as you got what you asked for, everyone's happy.

Drunken, smelly British? Say it ain't so!

It isn't so. Media has distorted your perceptions.

I was inviting Walter to tell us more. I think he may be in Dorset, one of the cleaner parts of the country.
Or he may have encountered some Chelsea fans in Munich, fresh off the bus.

He he. Better than drunk Chinese

From today's paper:

Was it really necessary for all radio stations to mark the occasion of Robin Gibbs' untimely death by playing bits of Stayin' Alive?

Some decorum, please.

Hello dear Prince. Nice to see you around these parts again.

Hello hello. How's you and the lovely gorgeous Fiona?

Mustn't grumble, and the lovely F is lovelier than ever.

Enjoying this warm weather.

So I stopped a bus from running this evening.

We did some shopping in a supermarket and then entered the bus at the nearby bus station. (In the good old days, it was in front of the library, which I frequently used when I've been here 45 and more years ago; now it's a booze large Wetherspoons pub.) Since there no number or direction sign posted, I asked the driver, if it was the nine.
It really WAS, since the bus had to stop from that moment (seemed the 'sign-number-making-computer' or whatever it is called, didn't boot anymore).
And a bus isn't allowed to run without it by law ...
But the reserve bus arrived quickly, seconds before the next regular bus.

Stay away from buses )

A bus isn't allowed to run by law without the "sign-number-making computer" working?

Seriously?

At least that's what the driver said; and why obviously no-one complained. (I had suggested, to pin a handwritten "9" on the windscreen ...)

The driver said "I have no number?"
Walter said "Nein".
The driver said "How do you know it's a nine, then?"
Walter replied "No, not nine, nein".
The driver said "Are you taking the mickey?"
Walter said "Nein."

You guys can't seem to get on a ******* train or a bus without causing some sort of futile fuss.

Have you no idea that you're just another face in the crowd to the drivers, conductors, inspectors, etc etc etbloodycetera that passes through their workday and has been doing for as long as they have been pursuing their sad careers shifting overweight globs of ectoplasm from one place to another according to the demands of the whimsies they have developed during the course of their daily doings.

Putting myself in the place of Walt's bus driver I'm not quite sure how I might have responded to his suggestion that I place a sign with a "9" on it in the windscreen. I might explain that such a sign might restrict my vision and also be contrary to the Displaying of Signs in Public Places Act. I might tell him to shove his ******* sign up his fundament if I was at the end of a long shift and my lumbago had been enjoying itself all day.

Had I been Mac's train conductor in Germany in similar circumstances I might have added a right cross to the jaw.