Mr Fredricksen

Yesterday the joys of public transport were so abundant they led to me teaching an old man to play Angry Birds. I am a frequenter of obscure bus services, whose vehicles have been running since way before I was born and the drivers even longer, and had been on one of these for about twenty minutes before the exhaust pipe dropped off. The other passengers, three old women and an old man, were of no help and the driver couldn't work a mobile phone, so it was left to me to call the bus company. They reassuringly informed me that it was a "tow job" and left us to fend for ourselves on the side of the A65 in Arctic conditions. It was at this point that the old man, who I'll name Mr Fredricksen for the purposes of this blog (because I like the old man in the film Up), showed an interest in Angry Birds. Once he had grasped the concept of touch-screen technology, he turned out to be quite a talented Angry Bird aimer and I had to wrestle my iPod back off him before he beat all my high scores and put me to shame. He then proceeded to tell me his life story, which mainly involved driving buses around several different counties before retiring and sitting on them for free instead, using his Elderly Person's Bus Pass, which he got quite defensive about when I asked to borrow it. Eventually Kev turned up with a 56 seater coach and all 5 of us piled onto it and rolled to our destination in style. Kev had turned the heaters on and I was just beginning to (literally) warm to him and his extraordinary beard, when he ruined it all by winking at me and saying "Call me again any time love" whilst I was getting off. I never did find out Mr Fredricksen's real name because he got off for a fag before I had to chance to ask him, but no doubt I'll see him on the 581 chuntering about faulty drop-shafts and disused Little Chefs again.