Bus Ticket Origami: An Urban Art-Form

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The Inspiration...

This article was inspired by an incident which happened, like so many others, on the bus.

As is usually the case with bus journeys, I was bored. This is the hazard of public transport (along with lateness and burning death). I am however quite used to being on buses and therefore also used to being bored on them. This particular day I got on the bus and sat near the back on a pair of seats set sideways into the bus and facing across to another set of seats facing towards my own. On this opposite seat sat a business-man looking type; 30'ish, balding early but had shaved down what was left so it didn't look too bad, glasses, suit, shoes like naff slippers made from leather, leather satchel filled with whatever it is business men carry about (I theorise that they are all equipped with standard issue packed lunches, notepad and pen and a sealed thermos filled with black-hole material they can unleash to swallow the planet and create a rift in the space-time continuum to facilitate their escape). To my right and below me, due to the orientation of my seat, were two mid-teenage girls reading a copy of 'Heat' magazine, to stave off the intense boredom I rather shamefully resorted to reading snippets of this dire publication over their shoulder, until people began to suspect my nefarious activities. Luckily I was able to avoid becoming an ostricised social parriah by convincing the other passengers I was merely attempting to look down their tops. This saved me much embarrasment.

After performing this cunning ruse I began to absent mindedly fiddle with my bus ticket, I started to fold a rather fetching and elegantly crafted paper plane of the thin-nosed-dart-shaped-variety.
I was half way through this marvel of wood-pulp derivative aeronautic technology when I looked up only to realise that the business guy was doing exactly the same thing!. This was understandably exciting. This guy, with whom I seemed to have nothing in common with except for happening to be goin somewhere along the bus route, was partaking of this artform along side, yet completely independantly, of me. He folded a paper plane of a broad winged, flat nosed variety. I felt this blissful symbiosis. A true connection. It suddenly occurred to me that bus ticket origami was a trancendental experience. Something which surppassed the meagre boundaries of class, age, race or gender. To further this experience a guy sat next to me, his girlfriend sat across, next to the business guy. She began to fold her bus ticket too! she first constructed a ring (not as easy as it may sound to make a good one), then she uncoiled it and made a triangular prism! After this she lost steam with her multiple shape program and only came up with something that looked kind of like a pair of pants.

This was all it took to convince me, I must spread the word and this glorious form of art must be used to unite the world!

Bus Tickets...

Bus tickets lend themselves to a variety of artistic uses. Before I discovered the joy of bus-ticket origami I had a habit of absent mindedly eating mine. However a change of ink to a fouler tasting variety prevented this habit, and averted the worried looks of several travellers. Apparently this is a form of artistic expression which runs in my family. Unknown to me my Mother has been engaging in bus ticket origami for some years.

Bus tickets come in various shapes and sizes, from the long arrow shaped tickets of Leicestershires innacurately named Arriva bus company to the long strips of receipt styling from the Nottingham-Trent company. My personal favourite are the tickets of the Trent-Barton bus company, which are rectangular and approximately 2x2.5 inches and are the medium of the above story. Different tickets make for entirely different origami experiences and I would suggest that you try as many as you possibly can to find which best suits you and the myriad possibilities they all present.


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