Not that I am particularly fond of reality TV, but I reckon it should be extended to other areas of life. Which you might think is a bit strange considering other areas of life are reality in themselves. But I think reality can be made all the more real by giving us access to more parts of it at any one time.

And the case in point I make is the also the reason I thought of it in the first place. I was sitting on the top deck of the 139 omnibus that runs from Oxford Circus to West Hampstead and was pleasured to notice that the driver had left his intercom on. Marvellously, my driver was one of those characters who has a nice word and a cheeky smile for any non-miserable commuter who passes his way; and he was a Rastafarian at that – always a group of people I have a certain fondness for. So through a cheap and crackling speaker above my head I could hear his every word. And it certainly enhanced my journey – an excellent soundtrack to go with my large screens of moving London scenery.

The 139 is also the route that goes over the zebra crossing that was utilised by John, Paul, George and Ringo on The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, so I spent half the journey secretly hoping that we’d run over some American tourists trying to re-create the image when we got there. I had to be realistic though: only Japanese tourists ever bother to venture down to Abbey Road, and they are too sweet to incur the wrath of a red bus driving Rastafarian. If you ever get the chance to visit this site of pop history, don’t bother. It really is just a zebra crossing and a road. There’s a bit of graffiti on the wall outside the Abbey Road Studios itself, but apart from that all you’ll experience is a journey into upper middle class suburbia on a bus that probably hasn’t got it’s drivers intercom switched on.



Which is a shame because if Ken Livingstone really wants to encourage people onto buses he could do a lot worse than to introduce schemes like the one I have proposed.

More bus shenanigans comes from my mate Simon who, during the early hours of New Years Day, found himself crammed inside a particularly busy bus when all hell broke loose upstairs. A number of individuals who had lost control of their brains after imbibing alcohol broke into a fight. It apparently spilled downstairs, escalated and the bus had to give up its journey. This is the sort of thing that wouldn’t happen in the future.

Not because we would have ways of curtailing the violent effects of alcohol; nor because we might have different forms of transportation. I imagine we will have both those things and neither will be used put to use due to political and social idleness. But because we will all surely be carrying compressed custard pies in our wallets, so small we could have carry many without feeling the extra weight or inconvenience. And at the mere suggestion of a scrap, out they would come for a right royal wrangle.



And lo, the Accident and Emergency Departments up and down the country would contain only empty plastic chairs (although I still reckon fireworks in the future will burn peoples eyes, but then I reckon by then eye emergencies will have been contracted out to optometrists) and the NHS could concentrate on giving us all free gill implants for when we want to swim under water for up to 45 minutes at a time. And the police could concentrate on supervising protestors and naughty people on the Internet. And we’d all have a right fucking good laugh every time some idiot tried to start a fight. And these idiots are usually the sorts who like expensive clothes with labels (which in the future are almost certain to be animated and therefore even more annoying and tacky) and I’m the sort who would carry around maximum-staining pies, so as I’m sure you can understand I’m really looking forward to the future.

And so I cry in a literary written sense: Hurrah for the future and all its neo-potential possibilities…

Does that make sense?

Frankly I don’t give a nicely perfumed shit.