h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Grey Desk, your experience on the Sheffield bus sounds like something that happens quite regularly in Spain - people just chatting to each other. I know it wouldn't happen much in Canada either.

Like getting into a lift and everyone tries to pretend there is nobody on the lift with them . . . in Spain people always say hello and might even start up a short chat . . . again, wouldn't happen in Canada.

I was really surprised when I first moved to Spain (Salamanca) and for the first month was living in an apartment building . . . the first day I went out and passed some of my neighbours they *all* greeted me, saying 'good morning, how are you, etc' and I was quite floored by this. As it had never been my experience either living in Canada or England that strangers in my apartment building would ever talk to me.

I actually quite like it. And I've even found myself starting up a chat with someone I don't know at all on the bus here, and you know what? It's really nice.


az

Chatting on buses is , wherever you find it.

But I still don't think you can describe this sort of thing as complex conversation. It couldn't be simpler or more straightforward now, could it?

And one source of Sheffield's charm is its total lack of pretention. Unless you're a Pig, of course

Pigs...

With 41 points in the bag, I'm still not prepared to go poultry auditing. I will tentatively accept however, that relegation this season is looking increasingly unlikely.

With reference to Blatherwump's earlier post...

Now...I talk a load of s---e. I *know* it's s---e. Yet from an innocent remark about Magritte, I managed to get various people talking about buses. And pigs. This has to be some sort of talent, if only I could harness it.

"How exactly is one stopped from smoking outside?"

Well, it's a combination of a no smoking sign, general courtesy and docility, and, lacking those, the knowledge that a lot of Portland's bus users are all too ready to say something if they're also standing under that shelter and don't like your smoking.

(Truth be told - if I'm alone at a busstop on a rainy day with a cigarette, I smoke under the shelter. No sense being a damned fool about it.)

Now, regarding chatting on Portland busses...

I sat next to an old lady on the way home from work one day. Actually, she sat next to me. Then she asked me if I knew that Oregon has its own special state dollar coins. I happen to know that it doesn't. She produced a perfectly normal dollar coin out of her pocket, the kind you would get in any of the 50 states, handed it to me, told me that it was a special Oregon dollar, and that I should put it in my pocket, then I'd always have a dollar. I thanked her, pocketed the coin, looked out the window, and dozed off in short order.

I was awakened by my own coughing. I had a cold, you see. I immediately noticed that I was being looked at, and looked up at the old lady, ready to say "excuse me" or something. She asked, "What did one casket say to the other casket?" I had no idea. "Is that you, coffin?"

She exited the bus, and I rode home, bemused.

When I lived in Ottawa, many many years ago, I used to get a very long bus ride from Downtown, where I lived, to out near Kanata, where I worked. Often one of the passengers would be this dishevelled, wasted looking guy - skinny and with a dishevelled beard. A real acid casualty. Unintentionally left blank.

Anyway...one day he got on with a set of golf clubs. And - compelety straightfaced - started to practice his putting down the aisle. On a crowded bus. He'd put, his ball would go astray, and he'd scramble around the seats and passengers to retrieve it. The passengers were all in the standard, sullen, commuting mode whereby they avoided eye contact with anyone - least of all with our golfer, so nobody commented. Mind you, they were probably also a little scared.

The best bit was when the bus had cleared a little. He managed a particularly long put. He went scrabbling amongst the back seats to retrieve his ball...and came up with two.






Then there was the incident on a Liverpool bus with the old lady playing the harmonica...