What is it about me that makes strange things happen when I’m around?
Today, as it was my day off, I decided to go to Wells on the bus to have some lunch. I cycled to the bus stop in Street where I found a handful of people waiting for the bus, most of them sheltering in the bus stop from the drizzle. There was only one person outside the shelter and he was a homeless person who I had coincidentally shared the bus with last Wednesday. I recognised him from last year as a regular beggar in Wells. I guess he was on his way to work.
He was sitting on the pavement leaning up against the building drinking sherry from the bottle, coughing and spitting. He was dirty and I remember last week that eh smelled really bad. I made a mental note not to sit near him.
The bus pulled up, I got on and, not wanting to sit anywhere near him, sat at the front of the bus in the seat facing the rest of the passengers.
Off we went. But as soon as the bus started moving I heard a very well-spoken woman in her fifties shouting at the tramp sitting on the seat behind her.
“You have been sitting on the ground. How can you then sit on a bus seat? You are disgustingly. Nobody will want to sit on that seat after you’ve sat on it”
People started looking at her. He responded
“I bet you’ve never been on your arse have you love”
The argument continued along the same lines for a minute or two. Then some of the other passengers sitting nearby started joining in and told her not to be so rude. Very normal people (like us) were telling her that they too liked to sit on the pavement sometimes. People laughed. She got worse.
“Why don’t you take a taxi if you don’t want to travel on a bus? Or go to Wells in your Rolls Royce” suggests a man on the next seat. They all laugh.
“The taxis are filthy too” she screams – more laughter follows.
“My father is a surgeon” she shouted. “He has probably operated on your brain”. The (perfectly normal and reasonable) people around her started to get a bit more animated. I couldn’t catch everything that was going on although I had a grandstand seat. However, I did manage to hear this…
“How dare you speak to me like that you dirty creature. “I’ll have you know that my daughter is a barrister”
and my all time favourite
“You are all working class scum”
The bus starts to erupt now and the church warden on his day off, the WI president going to sell lemon curd at Wells market, the charity shop volunteer helping out at a coffee morning, the middle aged tourists and the college students going to meet her friends in Wells, all turn on this woman.
She starts shouting at the top of her voice “All you people, stop shouting at me. What are you doing with your spiteful claws all attacking me (she makes the motion of a cat scratching at the air). Go away all of you. Go away and leave me alone”.
Even the bus driver is getting involved now and he threatens to stop the bus unless it all calms down.
Time for a rescue. I walk slowly up the aisle to where the “lady” is sitting and offer her a way out “Would you like to come and sit down the front with me. Come on, let me take you down the front.” She accepts,gathers her coat and umbrella and takes me arm as I lead her out of the teeth of the mob just in time to avoid a lynching.