Bus, interrupted

It was the nonchalance with which a random bus driver casually did a u-turn on a busy A-road in front of me that first caught my attention.

It was the thought of what the sight looked like to me that had me plunging into my bag for my camera like I was after a grenade with its pin out. Like the time I snapped a porakabin being lowered gingerly into the high-sided London mews I worked in because I felt like a witness to the world’s biggest game of Tetris. 

Now I’m a veteran Londoner: the urge to be snapped in front of an iconic London bus with two Churchill v’s up, Japanese tourist style, has long left me.


But this guy was breaking the Bus Rules.


Buses don’t to u-turns any more than they do wheelies. The rule breach (and the photo it let me take) transforms this bus into an extra from 28 Days Later or perhaps (more chillingly) that Bat For Lashes video. Hackney residents, terrified of the zombie hordes pouring in from Harringay, try to block off one of London’s arteries before the undead poison shuffle, moaning, into the heart of Stoke Newington.

Or something – it had been a long day trying to think up creative crap and boredom breeds febrile thoughts. It was still weird (and great) to see something you see every day doing something you don’t.