Bus blues

I take the bus into work and home again. Like thousands of others, I'm beholden to Dublin Bus for a generally comfortable journey into the city. What renders it uncomfortable on occasions is nothing to do with the Volvo buses or Dublin Bus's use of them, it's other passengers. I can easily recall when I would prepare a lecture, mark some harmony, mentally outline a lecture, and much else on the way into work. Yesterday I aspired to do the same, but something stopped me. Several things in fact. First, one selfish scumbag was listening to his iPod so loudly that everyone on the lower level of the bus could hear it. Whatever he was listening to, I could hear the voices, the percussion, the brass riffs, and even bits of the bass line. Apple should be sued for the leakage from its pathetic little ear pieces. That was distracting, so too was the woman behind me who was loudly using her mobile phone to organise an insurance claim. Apparently the accident wasn't her fault, because she was on her side of the road; it's a very difficult bend and cars coming in the other direction have to move into the oncoming lane; the car on the other side crossed into her lane and damaged the car door; but the other driver was claiming that she could have been even further over her side. What a pity it didn't damage her phone. Somebody else on the bus was texting and had the alert signal set so high, with reverb., that the repeated twin beeps could probably be heard in Belfast and Galway as well.

Inevitably my attempts to do anything creative were scuppered. The sad thing is that if I had brought my iPod along, I would still have heard Ms Ill-Used-Car-Driver, Mr My-Music-Is-All-That-Matters, and other miserable apologies for humanity, because I don't want to deafen myself and I've yet to find portable headphones that exclude loud conversations and other mpeg players.

There's really no escape these days.