There are a number of reasons why I chose to travel by bus, the need for someone to take me to the nearest airport 70km away, the price difference and possibly most relevant, not wanting my memories of the golden age of air-travel destroyed by experiencing the sad thing it has become. But for whatever reason, I found myself again taking on the 650km trip from King Williams Town to Durban this past weekend.
In South Africa we have the choice of a number of carriers, but I find that the times, and routes encourage me to chose one company for the KWT-Durban trip and another for the return trip, I travel there through the night, and return on a bus travelling through the day. The day bus is also a premium luxury coach.
Monday morning just before 07h00 I found myself sitting in one of my favourite seats (right up front on the upper deck), and opposite the isle from me were two elderly ladies. Right from the beginning I was amused by the sheer volume of STUFF they brought with them; bags, and thermos’ and plastic ice-cream containers repurposed to carry muffins and sandwiches, each of them also juggling cups of take-away coffee. Settling in was akin to setting up camp until the old dears were settled, walled-in by ramparts of their stuff.
Have you noticed how the elderly also tend to narrate their own actions? “Let me just put this coffee down here while I look for my muffins in this tub, so that I can take my blood-pressure pill, because if I don’t eat something I’ll feel all light-headed”.
Eventually the coach started moving, the first hour-or-so clearing the Durban Metropolitan area, so there was a lot of lurching as the vehicle had to stop and start and negotiate the morning rush-hour traffic. Of course it was during this time that the apparently more infirm of the two dears decided that the gallon of coffee she had consumed since settling on the bus needed out… she needed to visit the toilet, which was down a flight of narrow, steep stairs, almost directly under us.
And so the narration began once again;
“Oh my goodness, why do they make these stairs so steep, I’m going to have to sit on my bottom and take these stairs one at a time otherwise I’m going to fall for sure, why doesn’t the driver drive smoother? DRIVER CAN’T YOU LOOK WHERE YOU DRIVING?” then a pause as the complexities of the door latch were contemplated, followed by “OOOOOOOOH NOOOOOO! I can’t go in here, it’s FILTHY!” “Oh DRIVER! Why is the loo so dirty?” then “Oh dear now I must climb these stairs again, I’m going to have to sit on my bottom otherwise I’ll fall…”
And so after much ado she arrives again at her seat, whereupon there is again an unpacking into the aisle and a re-settling which involves practically everyone on the bus helping.
Now I need to interject here and explain that I am not criticising these old Biddies for the ailments of age, I’m observing…
The journey starts at 07h00 and I arrive in King Williams Town approx 18h00, so I was a captive audience for 11 hours, and for those 11 hours, the only periods of silence between those two was when they were forced to inhale oxygen, and it was clear that neither of them was ever a smoker!
One tries not to eavesdrop but it’s impossible NOT to hear, for hours at a time I watched movies on my tablet, and earphones did manage to block out some of the conversation, but unlike these two, movies have periods of silence, and sometimes I took a break from the movies…
I overheard the one Lady’s name, the other I did not, but let’s call them Mona and Lisa… shameless, I know, but what you gonna do about it? And I noticed some things…
Mona was more wealthy than Lisa, she lived in a retirement village, she travelled the world, she kept saying how she should rather have flown, she spoke at length about why she chose the “platinum health insurance” rather than the Gold. Lisa on the other hand rebutted the “I should have flown” statements with “I can’t afford to”, and she spoke of how she takes on part-time employment as and when she can. Lisa also kept trying to get Mona to take some tranquillizer pills to “calm her down”, to which Mona would angrily respond “I DON’T NEED TO CALM DOWN! HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I NEED TO CALM DOWN!”
And so the coach lumbered on until it reached Kokstad (locally known as “Erection City”), most buses stop at a rest-stop on the outskirts of the town, but this coach line chooses an express supermarket at a service station in town, so as the bus drove past the usual stop great cries of anguish went up across the isle from me, along with loud instructions to the driver, and then they reasoned between themselves that it must be the GPS that is leading him along this crazy route, and that he must be a new bus driver if he doesn’t know where he is supposed to stop. A great wailing, and gnashing of teeth followed as the bus pulled into the rather un-glamourous forecourt of a city service station “OOOOOOOOH and I suppose there are no loos here!” (that despite the fact that we stopped directly alongside the very prominently signposted ablutions).
As we dis-embarked we were advised that the next rest-stop would be at the Kie Bridge One-stop at aprox 16h00 and to shop appropriately. So, fed, watered and relieved, we re-embarked, some of us facing many more hours of narration.
You know how the old folks love to talk about their children, and grand-children? Well these two were no exception, Mona spoke endlessly “she is realllly such a beautiful girl, and she has this wonderful job, she makes SO much money, and she’s always travelling…”, “oooooooooh he has this perfect job, he earns so much money and he has such a beautiful wife”…, and this was interrupted as she paged through the pages of her celebrity magazine and commented about the Royal Couples and their latest inbred offspring “ooooooh he’s such a dish, and the Queen does look good for her age, but then again with her money, that’s hardly a suprise is iiiiiit?” “Do you know I just LOOOOOVE visiting London, so much better than this ‘New’ South Africa isn’t it, say the last time we took the bus, when was that 1999? That wasn’t the ‘New’ South Africa was is? Soooo much better then wannit?”
Mthata is about the two-thirds point along my route, and we crawled through it’s notorious traffic around 14h00 and Mona’s wailing started up again “you mean we not going to stop here? REALLY this is atrocious, I’m going to write a letter! How dare they treat us this way”, and the conversation was pretty much about that until we arrived at the beautiful Kie Bridge rest stop around 16h30, when we stopped, the Driver announced that we would be stopping for 10 minutes since we would again be stopping in East London just an hour down the line (yes I know, makes no sense, but then again we take what we can get) “oooooooooooooooooooohoooooooohoooooo! 10 minutes!? you can’t even go to the loo in 10 minutes! How do they expect us to get to the shop too in TEN MINUTES!?” I made sure not to be trapped behind them, but as I glanced back on my way out I saw the wall of goodies being dismantled to allow them to get out…” of course we all got back on within the 10 minutes, but these two had bought the whole shop, including what looked like a bucket of coffee each and during the process of dismantling their wall of possessions and getting seated these buckets of coffee were placed on the floor and…
Well the bus lurched into motion again and a tsunami of coffee washed down the isle! I’m tired of typing their responses now, so I’ll allow you to browse backwards and choose your favourites, because they were all repeated!
At 18h00 I arrived in dirty, hot King Williams Town, my journey over, my friend waiting for me, these two were maybe just over half way to their destination, if I still prayed, I’d have offered a prayer for the passengers and the drivers.
Now I’m sure that I come across as unsympathetic to those suffering the plights of advanced age, but let me assure you that is not the case, I myself am no longer a spring chicken, and practically everyone on that bus were helping these two. Also basically all of this was a recounting of the actions and statements of Mona, poor Lisa was trying her best to feed Mona tranquilizers and more than once said “stop being so negative”, and when we made eye contact, Lisa rolled her eyes most theatrically.
No, I recount this here because I learned/reinforced a lesson. An outside observer would see Mona’s life as “retired in luxury”, Mona saw her life as a hell that had to be endured. Both observations are of course true!
I used to be involved with a woman whose obsession about “retirement” made her life, and the lives of everyone close to her, a living hell. What exactly IS retirement? Is it not a mandated “you now too old to be useful to the economy anymore, so sit over there and wait to die”? Just last week my heart broke when my brother (who is 70) said, he can’t start any new kind of business because “his life is over”. I read a little thing about Clint Eastwood the other day, he is 93 if my memory serves me, and he is active and still producing and acting in movies and when asked how he manages to do this he replied “I don’t let the old man in”, there was even a song written about that, but it was too goddamn awful to endure for too long.
I’m 50, I’ve had a heart-attack, I have recently been diagnosed with type2 diabetes, I need reading glasses and contact lenses, my chest has slipped, I feel aches and pains, but I also find I feel worse the days I sit on my fat arse, and better the days I work consistently. Maybe I won’t emulate Mr Eastwood at 93, but I also learned this past weekend that being plugged into an expensive retirement is worse than working till I die.
I think it works like this;
Remember how Mona spoke ad-nauseaum about her wonderful children, and their wonderful jobs and their beautiful looks and spouses? Not once did that woman speak about how HAPPY her spawn were. Humans are conditioned to chasing the almighty dollar, they submit to employment with only the “how much” as a consideration, they work at a job they hate, to earn as much as possible so that they will have lots of time to wait to die, time to complain, time to be consumed by envy for the Royalty and other parasites, time to buy enough things to make their bus journeys as complicated as possible.
If Mona, and to a lesser extent Lisa, had just carried LESS on to that bus they would’ve been more comfortable. If she had been less of a snob she would’ve used the bus’ toilet (I did, and it was clean) and her journey would’ve been much more pleasant. If she took her nose out of the celebrity magazine she would’ve noticed an infinite green and beautiful “New” South Africa
I have noticed that there is a trade-off in this “maturing” business, as we become undeniably less physically able, we get to benefit from the wisdom we accumulate. We learn to “work smart” if we can no longer work (as) hard. But it all boils down to the degree of MENTAL fitness we retain !
Go Forth and
Be Awesome
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