A Day in the Life…

I realise I haven’t written this blog for quite a long time.  This is because I have been so busy day to day just getting into the routine of the job.  I keep meaning to write, but life gets in the way.  So I thought I would write “A Day in the Life” to show the sort of things I do all day.

At 07:53 I start my shift.  I never start at o’clock or half past or any logical sounding time.  I clock on exactly 15 or 20 minutes before my first bus is due out, depending on whether I have to carry out a “First Use Check.”

This morning, I’m doing a first use check.  This means going into the office where a supervisor marks me present on his computer and hands me a duty card.  I then trudge (cold and dark this time of year) around the back to the garage.  A number on my duty card corresponds with an allocated bus which I can find on a dry-wipe board.  A map then shows me the precise location of my bus in the grid of parked buses (they form roughly a 4  by 8 rectangle of buses packed tightly side by side and nose to tail.  Some of our larger drivers have trouble squeezing through…).  The grid is carefully planned so that the earliest buses are nearest the front.  When all is going to plan, the buses in front of yours have left or are just about to.

I find my bus and press the button to open the doors.  Nothing happens.  This means one of two things; either the air pressure in the tanks is low or the battery is dead, or both!  I force one door, flip on the power, check I’m in neutral and press the starter.  For a heart stopping moment, nothing seems to happen, then the engine roars into life.  The battery is clearly fine, the beeping dash tells me what I already know – my air pressure is low.  The air tanks operate the brakes, suspension and doors so they are crucial, but a few revs gets them charged up, and the doors decide they will open now.

After filling in some details about myself and the bus on a defects card, I proceed to walk around the bus checking everything on my list.  This includes lights, wheels, mirrors, wipers and many other things around the outside, then lighting and seating, safety equipment etc in the saloon (where the passengers sit).  I have a tick list on the card to complete to make sure everything is in working order.  Today, a parking light bulb is out, so I trudge back to the workshop to tell the supervisor and get someone sent to replace it.  Meanwhile, the guy in the vehicle behind mine is looking at his watch; it’s not just my bus that will be held up if the problem can’t be resolved quickly.

Bulbs are easy, however, and I’m quickly underway.  Today I’m not starting in the bus station, but going out “dead” to start an inbound journey.  I love driving along with the “Not in Service” sign showing at the front of the bus; I can take short cuts and drive as fast as I like (safely and within speed limits of course) as I have no passengers to worry about.  I reach my starting point with a couple of minutes to spare, and set up the destination blind so it now shows my route number and destination.  Once I have logged in to the ticket machine and programmed the correct journey into it, I’m ready to go!

Because it’s early, I manage to go a couple of stops before I find some passengers to collect. I manage a particularly cheery good morning as they board, because even though I only started the engine half an hour ago, the air blowers are starting to blow warm already, and that puts me in a good mood; some buses seem to take an hour or more to warm up, while one or two have no heating working.  Hard cheese if that’s the case; if the blowers are doing their job of clearing the windscreen, they’re legal, hot or not!

Because it’s a Saturday, I’m not too busy this early, and I get the bus back in plenty of time.  In fact, I have to pause at one of the stops and wait.  My duty card has a list of timing points that I must not get ahead of.  If I start to run early, I simply stop and wait until the time on my card matches the time on my ticket machine, then set off once more.

This particular route is a circular.  Having started from the halfway point, I now have two more full circuits to run before my break.  This is a short day – it is more common to have to do four of these circuits before a break.  The next two circuits pass without incident, apart from the fact that everybody seems to have ten pound notes, eating up my float.  I have explained how we have to maintain our own float in one of my earlier blogs, so you can appreciate how annoying it is for me, giving away all my coins. On my final return to the bus station, I log off the ticket machine and sign myself off the defect card, circling the box to say there have been no defects arising en route, then leave the bus ready for the next driver.

After an hour’s break, which I spend in the staff room chatting with the other drivers as they come in and out on their various breaks, I now switch routes.  I’m no longer doing the circular, but taking a bus to a hospital in the neighbouring town and back, an hour each way, done twice (so a four hour stint). Before I have to start, I pay an extra visit to the loo in the hope I will then be able to hold on for the duration.

At the station, my bus is nowhere to be seen; it isn’t back from its previous trip yet. The sun is out and the traffic has built up which doesn’t bode well for the smooth running of the second half of my shift.  Another vehicle is found for me and I’m underway on time.  Halfway up the hill out of town I pass the guy whose bus I was supposed to have on his way down, and give him a cheery wave.

It doesn’t take me long to find out what kept him.  I am held up for over five minutes queueing at the roundabout for John Lewis.  The unexpected mild and sunny day has brought everyone out of hibernation and they’re all driving to the shops.  This queue is repeated at every shopping centre between home and the hospital.  I get there ten minutes late, then have to fight my way back through it all again! For the first time this year (well, it is only February) I get hot enough to ditch my jumper and put my sunglasses on to protect myself from the unaccustomed glare of sunlight on my white shirt.

By the time I get back to the bus station I’m over twenty minutes late – it’s a good job I paid that visit earlier – and as fast as I can I reprogram the ticket machine and get my next load of passengers on board.  I stop looking at my duty card at this point; knowing how late I am will only make me want to rush, and that’s when errors happen, as I have learnt to my cost (more on that another day).  I put on my four way flashers, a signal to the banksmen I’m ready to leave, and one of them approaches to guide me back out of the bay.

Without a single glance at my card, I fight my way back up the hill, back through the John Lewis traffic and all the other hotspots and back to the hospital.  Only then do I dare to check the card – I’m only just over ten minutes late!  Somehow I’ve managed to claw back some time.  It’s now mid afternoon, the sun has found a new bank of clouds to hide behind and the traffic is thinning out.  After a quick sip from my water bottle and a change of glasses I start my final inbound journey of the day.  Again, I ban myself from looking at the card until I’m on the last leg of the trip.  Miraculously, I bring her in to the bus station just two minutes late, where the next driver is waiting to take her out again.  He was my mentor during training, so we chat while I log myself out of the ticket machine, sign off the defect card (no defects to report) and he adjusts the seat and signs himself on.

I haven’t quite finished my day.  I now have to go to one of the machines to pay in my day’s takings.  I have a paltry amount today because I didn’t carry many commuters (it being a Saturday)  and most of my passengers had passes or pre-paid tickets.  The readout from the ticket machine declares that I have £79.60 to pay in.  A good day (on a more popular route during the week) could see me taking over double or triple that amount.  But I have another problem.  I may only owe £79.60, but I have £85 in notes and a rather depleted float. To give the correct amount, I would have to put in £75 in notes, then deplete my change further to pay the rest.  Instead, I choose to make an over-payment and shove £80 into the machine.  The difference will come back to me in my pay packet next week or the one after.  If I under pay (because, for example, I make a mistake with change and my takings are down) this gets deducted from my pay.  Funnily enough, we’re all really careful giving out change!

Now, at last, I am done for the day, and I’ve had a good one.  Even though my bus was really late at one point, nobody has grumbled at me and because today was a shorter shift than usual, I’m away home with time and energy to spare.  I’ve a day off tomorrow, then I’m on early Monday, when all the commuters will want to buy their weekly passes from me, and no matter how much they slow me down serving them, they will grumble if we’re late…

Keeping Afloat

After a few weeks of driving, I’m beginning to get into the swing of things. I’ve managed to get lost one more time – driving late, in the dark, on a less familiar route, I became a little confused at a roundabout and chose the wrong exit.  However, I am now much more confident at manoeuvring the bus, and quickly chose a suitable side road to reverse into and get back on course with only a couple of minutes delay.  It earned me one cheerful comment from an elderly gentleman as he disembarked about exploring a part of town he hadn’t seen before, but I’m not sure how many other passengers even noticed!

Our bus company is quite forward technologically, with their own version of the Oyster card and even a mobile app you can use to buy and display tickets.  From the driver’s point of view, it’s very simple; if the passenger has valid travel for that day, they simply show you their phone screen with an animated rectangle that alternates between the current time and that day’s codeword.  The driver then simply presses the button on the ticket machine that says “mob app” and the passenger is counted on board.  The animation and time are to help protect against fraud; you can’t simply lift a screenshot of the rectangle from your friend’s phone and show it to the driver on yours for a free trip, because we know not to accept static images.

However, when it comes to cash handling, we are still so twentieth century!  When we started our classroom week after qualifying to drive, one of the many things we were issued with was our float, which we keep for the entire time we drive for the company.  Basically, I was given (and signed a slip to say I had received) two twenty pound notes and a list of recommended coinage.  These I took to the bank with the list, and that was my float sorted.

Every day at the end of the shift, the ticket machine prints out the total takings for that day, and we go to another machine to pay it in, slotting the notes in one at a time (fiddly) then pouring coins into a hopper until the counter reaches the figure on the ticket.  We have to be selective doing this – we are responsible for having the right coins for next day’s float left in our tray at the end.

This week, I’ve had a bit of trouble with change – everybody seems to have boarded my bus with notes or pound coins, and by yesterday I had all but run out of twenty and ten pence pieces.  The firm do not provide change, so that meant a run down to the bank on my own time for more.  I was a little mystified as to how I could run out so quickly, as other days I have had an excess of coins which I have gladly poured away into the hopper to lighten my load, but I think I’ve worked it out.  This week has been half term holiday in the schools, and I’ve been taking a lot more teenagers on board, all with ten pound notes doubtlessly given them by parents keen to get them out from underfoot for an afternoon!

So next time you board a bus with a twenty pound note and the driver’s face drops, you know why.  If you are on board early in his shift, and he has to  change it with his precious coins, you’ve probably cost him another trip to the bank later, on his own time.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day.  The day, apparently, a rodent emerges from hibernation and heralds the start of spring.  And the title of a movie where the lead character has to repeat this day until he gets it right – and so it seemed last week for me.  I had been given the exact same schedule to do for three days in a row, and a nice simple one at that, apart from the early 5 am start. A number 1 route followed by a 2 then a break, then two lots of 2 then home.  Simple.  Except I had not yet done the 1 on my own, so on the first day of my second week driving solo, I was sightly anxious, and went over the route in my head several times: I knew the way as far as the train station, then I just had to remember right at the cemetery, right towards the shopping centre, then back again.

I was determined, on my second week of driving solo, that there were going to be no missed turnings; no embarrassing apologies to passengers and a hasty re-think of how to get the bus back on track. I was going to get it right this time.

But I hadn’t counted upon the power of Groundhog Day.  So intent was I on getting that first run right that I made the schoolboy error of forgetting to look at the diversions board before leaving the the staff room and setting off in search of my bus.

It all started well.  I remembered all my turnings and as an added bonus, I was keeping to schedule; no unexpected traffic or passenger requests to slow me down.  I made the right at the cemetery, had to think at a couple of roundabouts but made the right choice, and was cheerfully headed toward my last right before the shopping centre when cones started to appear.  And “road ahead closed” signs.  Oh dear.  What I didn’t see was any diversion signs.  Then I met a colleague coming the other way.  He stopped alongside and we opened our windows to speak.

“You can’t go down that way.  You’ll have to turn round.  Take West Road instead.  Or was it East?”

There was no choice.  I had to make a three point turn.  My first one ever in a bus.  With parked cars nearby.  It took me more like five points, but I did it, found the alternative route (still no diversion signs) and made it to the shopping centre just a couple of minutes down.  The closure was only one way, so I was able to drive back by the expected route.

So that was that.  My resolve to make no more wrong turns in ruins on my first run of the week!  The rest of the day went along just fine, I didn’t get lost on the 2 route, and I kept reasonably to schedule.  But the curse of Groundhog Day hadn’t finished with me yet.

Day two of the same schedule.  Just to add to the sense of deja vu, some of the same passengers were waiting for my bus, themselves on early shifts in their jobs.  This time, I had checked the diversions board, the 1 route diversion was still in place, but now I was clear on where I was going.  Today I would get it right. And as an added bonus, a colleague boarded for a lift home after his night shift; company for part of the way!  I think we made it half a mile, over the top of the hill past the hospital.  Then my dashboard flashed on and off, and my acceleration cut out; I was coasting without power!  The other driver came to my aid immediately.

“Can you roll round the corner onto the next stop?”

When I did, he hopped out, lifted the battery bonnet, fiddled with something and the bus came back to life.  He jumped aboard and we set off, but seconds later, we cut out again.  As we were still facing downhill, I rolled into the next stop  and jumped out to call the supervisor back in the office.  Having established that a battery reset had already been attempted, I was told a replacement bus was on its way to me, and to apologise to my passengers for the delay.  Most were very polite about it, one man insisted on grumbling but I was content to ignore him.

A bus quickly arrived, I moved my things across,  signed onto the ticket machine and we were on our way at last, leaving the poor driver who brought it to me stranded on the roadside next to the broken down bus.  My passengers got to their workplaces late but in one piece.  After that, the rest of the day passed without incident.  When I got to the point of yesterday’s debacle, I found the sign for the diversion (maybe it had been knocked over in the night yesterday) and followed it, finding my way easily.

Then came Day 3 of Groundhog Day.  What went wrong that day? Nothing!  The bus worked, I remembered the diversion, I stayed reasonably on time, and the schedule was as simple as it looked; two runs then a break, two runs then home.  So, just like the movie, having finally got the day “right,” the next day was a different schedule; Groundhog Day was over!

Going Solo

I have just finished my first week of working alone as a fully-fledged driver! For the first couple of days I felt very anxious.  With the mentor there, if there was anything I wasn’t sure of, he was there to ask, but now I was out on my own, no help, just managing. Somehow.

So many things went wrong…

1. Taking the wrong turning – twice! Both times the passengers were amused rather than annoyed, and I was able to get the bus back on track quite quickly.
2. Taking the bus out to a housing estate before 6 am to start a route, only to find the cars had double-parked over night and I couldn’t fit through.  The solution?  To bang on the door of one of the houses with a car outside until the owner woke and could be badgered into moving his car for me.  Ten minutes late, I finally had my bus on its way.
3. Being given one of the brand new buses to drive, only to be unable to get it off the stand in the depot.  I popped it into reverse, waited for the wave from the banksman, released the hand-brake and, nothing!  Into neutral, into reverse, nothing again!  Mystified, I waved the banksman over to help me.  He knew the problem straight away – the reverse had a safety lock, and there were two buttons I had to press to get the bus into gear.  After listening to his grumble about giving new buses to the drivers without bloody training them to flipping drive them first, and it is only £200k’s worth of equipment, after all, I was underway five minutes late again.
4. Being so late back with one of my buses (actually, the new one because I was so terrified of scratching the thing I drove even more cautiously than usual), that I missed the next one I was supposed to drive altogether, and the “spare” driver had to run the route instead.  I was able to redeem myself by agreeing to take out a different route even though it put me into overtime.

But so many things went well, too.  Each time I got a bus round on time was a success.  The fact I didn’t have any accidents or even near misses was a success.  The fact that I sometimes got my bus reversed off the stand without the guidance of the banksman was a success.  And, most importantly, once the nerves calmed down, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  And I think  enjoying one’s job has to be a very great success…

Learning Fast

 

Ooops!

The first week of driving with a mentor is over, and I have learnt so much already.  The first, and most embarrassing, lesson is that the kerbs in the depot are ridiculously high – I managed to beach my bus on the kerb on Thursday, and this tiny piece of bumper broke off when I tried to back out again!  The damage is so small (and frequent) that they aren’t even going to bother fixing it, but I still had to fill out the paperwork which is on record somewhere…

I kept the chunk because I’m slightly weird like that, and as a reminder to take extra care when approaching the stands.

But the other lessons are less painful and sometimes amusing.  As well as just learning the routes and dealing with the ticket machine and the customers, I have also learnt the following;

One, red traffic lights are your friend.  As soon as you have put the hand brake on, you can

• take your feet off the pedals
• roll your shoulders, shake your feet, lift your buttocks off the seat to get some circulation back
• get that sip of water/mint/tissue you’ve been wanting since five stops ago.
• fidget, scratch, look at your duty card to see if you’re on time (and immediately regret looking)

Then, as the lights change, switch your concentration back on, release that hand brake and go.

Two, don’t bother thinking that you can build up your speed and race to get up that next hill.  There will be a pensioner at the stop at the bottom who just wants a lift to the stop at the top, dear.  So you wait while they shuffle into a seat, then listen to your poor motor wheeze and groan as it fights its way up the hill from a standing start.

Three, the uniform gives you an air of authority, especially if you team it with a hi-vis jacket.  I got the bus stuck in a local market town on market day, because the traders had parked their vans illegally opposite a tight turning.  A quick toot on my horn and a stern word from my mentor got the vans shifted and the bus on its way again.

Four, while you are the epitome of courtesy and loveliness to your passengers, the other road users had better watch out!  You can’t afford to wait patiently to pull out from your stop or make a turn at a junction, because nobody wants to give way to buses.  Instead, you creep forward an inch at a time until the other cars have no choice but to stop for you, then, with a cheeky wave, you’re off!  And, my favourite sport while driving, the constant monologue criticising other drivers – “See that little stick by your steering wheel?  It’s an indicator – try using it!” “Ooh, look, a bus!  Bet you wish you hadn’t come round that corner so fast!” “Come on, mate – you could get a bus through there!”

Five, this job is actually fun.  Most of the passengers are friendly, and some are even grateful for the service you provide.  The shifts are long but pass quickly because you are so busy.  And, when you are driving well, there is a real sense of pride to getting that big old beast through the parked cars/tight bends/tricky spaces that you never would have thought possible at the start of training.

Impossible Schedules and Grumpy Passengers

After a week of route learning, they’ve finally let me have a go at driving the bus with passengers!

They partnered me up with a very calm and patient gentleman by way of a mentor.  My first “live” shift was a Sunday morning.  When we looked at the schedule, the mentor’s face fell a bit – it was a very full one!

When you sign in, you are passed a laminated card that lays out your entire shift for you – which vehicle you’re going to take and which routes you will run with it, then it lays out the time: what time you’ll collect the bus, load your passengers, leave the depot, pass each of the “timing points” on the route, reach the end, turn around, come back;  what time you should be back at the depot, what time you should load up for your next run, which route you will run next.  On that first card we had six different routes to cover on two different buses – a double decker for the morning then one of the long singles for the afternoon.

The schedule was extremely tight with only a five-minute margin between routes.  An experienced driver would have struggled to keep that lot on time, and they’d given it to me on my very first shift!

Well, we fell behind very quickly – I’m still getting the hang of the ticket machine, and as the passengers boarded, it took me a while to find the right buttons and make change.  The machine doesn’t do that for you, you have to tot it up yourself.  Sounds simple?  Yes, but all while you’re concentrating on so many other things; where they’ve asked to go, single, return, day-rider, where that blasted button is – a button along the bottom row selects types of ticket, then another menu appears with buttons down the side to select.  Take money, issue the ticket,  tot up the change fast – the passenger wants to sit and the next one is already pushing forward.

Then, I’m driving carefully – my first time ever with passengers, don’t want to brake hard and get in trouble for jolting them! So we creep at a slightly nervous 25mph between stops.

Then, another thing starts to happen to make me even later.  The passengers at the stops are starting to get cross because the bus is late.  So it reaches a tipping point.  A woman steps on – “can you tell me, please, why this bus is so late?”

“Yes, sorry, it’s me – I’m route learning.  Trying my best.”

“Well, it’s just not good enough.  I’ll be speaking to your manager.”

That’s another 30 seconds wasted that I’m going to reach the next stop even later by!

But most passengers are friendly and supportive.  The regulars will be used to seeing new drivers escorted by mentors.

For a while, the mentor took over the driving, partly to let me watch one of the more complicated routes, mainly in an effort to go a bit faster and make up time.  But the schedule was so tight, we had limited success with that.

In the afternoon, after a much needed break (long enough to pop home and eat a dinner) we took one of the single deckers out on the busiest route to the next town.  I was anxious about driving it – I’d only had a brief turn with one last week, and the long wheel base makes them a much more challenging drive than the doubles.  I needn’t have worried – cornering was tricky and taken dead slow, but on the straight it handled beautifully and I could confidently keep up with the speed limits.  However, we quickly fell behind again, and I gratefully handed control back to the mentor when he offered.  When the next bus caught us up, we phoned the depot to get permission to drive back part of the way “dead” to make up time.  The other bus could collect the passengers we missed out.  Driving dead meant turning the destination blind to “out of service” then racing down the dual carriageway to pick up the route once more halfway back.

Our shift ran from 9 in the morning to 8 in the evening, and I was thoroughly worn out by the end.  The mentor said not to worry about the lateness – if enough drivers run a particular duty late, the organisers will eventually take the hint and alter it.  He felt sure that had he run the entire thing himself, he would not have been able to keep up.  On the plus side, we paid in the takings and they were spot on.

Day two was easier.  The schedule card looked a lot less daunting to begin with, so we only got a few minutes behind.  In the afternoon, we drove one of the smaller single deckers for the first time.  That was huge fun!  They’re more challenging in one way because the front wheels are right at the front.  This makes it hard to line up to the kerb at the bus stops.  In the other buses, where the front wheels are behind the driver, you use the overhang at the front to sweep over the kerb and bring the bus round level.  In the little ones, you don’t have that, and it’s very easy to touch the kerb as you come round.  So I had terrible trouble getting up to the stops – I would either land several inches away in the first place, or clip the kerb and land several inches away correcting it!

But on the go, that thing was such fun!  Small bus, nippy engine – nearly as nippy as a car, and I quickly found myself taking gaps I wouldn’t dare attempt in the other buses, careering happily round the roundabouts, until the RIBAS machine started pinging me.  The RIBAS system measures revs, idling, braking, acceleration and speed to keep an eye on how safely and economically you are driving.  They are notoriously unreliable, often accusing the driver of braking harshly and accelerating simultaneously , but they are linked back to the depot, and persistent faults are noticed and the offending driver told off and “retrained.”  So on the third ping for acceleration, I decided I needed to enjoy my ride slightly less and start behaving myself!

I’m halfway through two rest days now; tomorrow it’s all go again…

A Week at the Chalkface

What a week!  I now know all about customer service, GB drivers’ hours, Incident Reporting and ticket machines.  And those ticket machines needed a whole day all to themselves there are so many variations to the available tariffs!

There are day riders for adult, children and groups, covering a small area or a broader area; weekly tickets, card top-ups, mobile phone tickets, train tickets that include bus travel; tickets for students only, for the local university only, for students of local language schools only; for the elderly, disabled, with or without companion; and then there are the police and local enforcement officers, allowed on for free if in uniform, on production of a warrant card otherwise… and that’s before you start dealing with people who step on board with a handful of coins and simply want a single or return somewhere!

Next week, we’re going to have to drive the bus and remember all that.  My poor head is buzzing.  To be fair to the instructor, he made it all as interesting as possible, with a hilarious video showing us how not to deal with passengers.  It’s a sketch by Little Miss Jocelyn, link here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FKHyGi4jz8  where she plays the worst bus driver ever.

Today was much more fun.  We got in early, and as it was Sunday, a lot of the buses were parked up out of service.  We were able to be taken round all the different types of bus in the fleet to be shown all their little peculiarities; the different ways in which some had to be started, where all the important controls were, how to deploy the different wheelchair ramps, etc.  And then, we were allowed to drive one!  We were going to try out one of the little buses, but on inspection, we found it had a fault that needed immediate attention, so after a quick lesson on how report issues, we went in search of another that didn’t look like it might be needed any time soon.

Eventually, we plumped for one of the newer single deckers as it has a long wheel base compared to what we’ve been used to, and needs a bit of practice to get the hang of.  On the straight, it was nippier and easier to handle than the old training bus and I got to 30mph easily.  I got a little stuck where there was a tight pinch-point in the road and managed to clip the kerb, but on the whole, it went well.

Tomorrow, we get to drive the routes; I can’t wait!

A Nice Little Drive in the Country…

The big day arrived at last, and I awoke, a couple of hours early, but ready for the challenge.  We started the day early at the depot so that we could have a last practice of the reversing exercise before the arrival of the examiner, due at nine.  The reversing exercise seems simple enough in theory; pull the bus forwards until it is between but not touching or in front of, two cones, then reverse it into a parking bay diagonally opposite.  Just, don’t touch any lines with your wheels, because they’re imaginary walls, and hitting a wall is a fail!  The diagram below might help illustrate what I mean:

Somehow, I managed to get it in three tries in a row, then it was my partner’s turn to practise.

The examiner arrived duly at nine, coffee in hand, and I was up first.  To start with, there was a brief “show and tell” session.  I was able to correctly open the emergency door, demonstrate the use of windscreen washers and explain how to check oil levels and tyre pressures, then I was ready to carry out the reversing exercise.  I pulled forward (along the blue line in the diagram) so that the bus was perfectly lined up to the cones at the front, then put the bus in neutral.  The examiner, standing on the tarmac in front of me, nodded his approval, which was my signal to “put her in the garage.”  I knocked her into reverse, released the handbrake then eased my foot slowly off the foot brake.  As the bus crept backwards, I had to turn the wheel once, twice to my left, then watch that my offside front tyre did not swing out over the line as we turned towards the parking bay.  Next, I had to ease back past cone B (why the heck does that even have to be there?) and, as my nearside corner approached the nearside cone of the bay, haul the steering over to the right to straighten her up and pop her into the bay, being sure to stop before the bus hit the imaginary (but clearly marked) back wall.  Sounds simple?  Well, for three goes this morning, it was!  This time, I didn’t quite get it right, and I stopped just an inch short of my nearside back tyre touching the nearside line.  Now I was stuck with the bus kind of diagonally half in and half out of the bay.  But all was not lost.  In the course of the exercise, you are allowed to have one “shunt,” if necessary. This meant I was able to pull the bus forward again and over to my left a little so that I was nice and straight with the bay directly behind me.  Once more into reverse, and this time I got her in perfectly!

All that was left to do now was an hour of mistake free driving – what could possibly go wrong?  Well, at first, very little did.  To start with, I was directed over the narrow lifting bridge, which let me know he had chosen my favourite test route, past my old work place and out to one of the local villages away from our busy town centre roads.  I even managed to pull in tidily at the bus stop!  The “independent drive” section of the test took us back towards town on the dual carriageway, then up to one of the area’s busiest roundabouts.  It took a long time to find a gap, then as I began to pull forward, I had to stop again abruptly as another car came on round.  This was potentially a dodgy moment, but I’d had my Kalms and I held it together long enough to get round in one piece.  We wove our way successfully between the parked cars of a housing estate, tried a few more starts and stops (at different types of bus stop and to demonstrate uphill and downhill starts), then began to work our way circuitously back towards town.

On the very last roundabout before the depot, I finally ran into difficulty.  I needed to take the third exit, and a car wanting the second decided he wasn’t going to be intimidated by the big bad bus and entered the roundabout right alongside me.  This meant I couldn’t let my back end swing wide (or I’d have hit him) and had to stay snug to the centre of the roundabout instead.  As I checked my mirror, the offside wheel seemed shockingly close to the kerb – had I hit it?  If the examiner thought so, that would be a fail, just yards from the finish line.  In miserable silence, I took the bus home, being careful to keep her under the signed 5 mph once we reached the depot, or that would also have been a fail.

The examiner invited my instructor aboard, and I prepared myself to hear the worst.

“Okay,” the examiner told me, “I have to tell you, that’s a pass.”

A pass!  I’d done it!  And, it transpires, only four minor errors – a missed mirror check, the sharp braking on the earlier busy roundabout, a blocked footpath when I had been told to find a safe place to pull in, and the tight final roundabout where I may or may not have kissed the kerb, forgivable because of the car to my left, and the fact I had not mounted it at all.

In the afternoon, I had to take the Module Four test, which is like a much more detailed, hour long, show and tell (I had to demonstrate things like how to search the bus for contraband/devices/stowaways at border crossings, how to park a wheelchair user, where the fire hazards were around the bus, and how to carry out a daily walk-round safety check).  This part was easy for me, and I got a near-perfect score – I remembered everything except to beep the horn!

Happily, my training partner also passed, so we’ll progress together onto the next stage of training – a week in the classroom.

Hitting a Wall

The last two weeks on the course have been really quite hard. After the initial flurry of “beginner’s luck” progress, I seemed to hit some kind of wall (only metaphorically, I hasten to add) and suddenly it seemed as though I just couldn’t get it at all.  I ended up in a vicious cycle; something would go wrong, I would become anxious, something else would go wrong and the anxiety deepened, causing further mistakes.  For a little while, I wasn’t sleeping well, and my stomach would flip flop with dread when my turn came to get behind the wheel.

Around the middle of last week, the instructor pulled me aside and said I needed to do something to get those nerves under control, because there was no way I’d be able to pass the test while I was so tense and unable to absorb the help I was being given.  He recommended I go to the chemist and try some herbal remedies, so I ended up with a packet of Kalms.  I had never heard of the ingredients before, Hop Strobiles, Valerian and Gentian, but the important thing was they were legal and safe for drivers.  And by golly, did they work! I’m not sure what exactly they did, whether it was to suppress adrenalin or whatever, but somehow, they stopped the butterflies, they got me off to sleep each night for at least five or six hours, and they enabled me to concentrate better and become more relaxed at the wheel.

Even so, we have taken it to the wire with my progress.  Although I have been driving much better, staying off the kerbs (most the time), operating the steering wheel with relaxed arms, so getting round the bends more smoothly; as of  tonight, less than twenty-four hours before my test, I have yet to put in a practice run that would have passed.   Basically, come the day, I still have it all to do!

The Corbyn and Farage School of Motoring…

Week one of training is finally over, and I don’t mind saying, it’s been tough.  It might be my age, but the transition from car to bus is not coming as naturally as the transition from motorbike to car did in my twenties.

Happily, Friday was a turning point and some of the things the instructor was trying to drum into me started happening.  By lunch time, I was staying away from those kerbs.  I was making the effort to keep the bus up to a reasonable speed – and then the poor guy had to make me slow down!

We found a quiet depot and laid out cones to practise reversing manoeuvres. I managed it perfectly with guidance, but got a bit lost when he stepped out for me to try it independently, so he had to compromise by shouting hints through my window.  But for a first go, it was okay, and we’ve got two more weeks to improve upon it.

So I’ve got a method in my head now for keeping the bum away from the kerb on the turns: I call it “the Corbyn and Farage School of Motoring,” hence the title of this entry (for American or non-political readers, Jeremy Corbyn is a left-wing politician, while Farage is about as far-right as you can get without being a fully paid up Fascist).

It works like this.  In order to successfully make a right hand turn, the back left corner of the bus has to be as far over to the left as it can get, so we “make like Corbyn.”  Then, to turn left, that back right corner has to be as far over to the right as you can possibly get it, so we “make like Farage.”  See?  Simple.   I should patent that…

The practical test comes in two parts – the driving and a “show me, tell me” session where we walk around the bus with the examiner answering questions.  This means yet more study, so off I go to get on with it!