What is wrong with people?

Another day, another unpredictable London commute...

Along with the change in seasons, the crisp snap in the air, and the ever-earlier descent into dusk each evening; there seems to be a change in people. Maybe it's naivety to London, or random coincidences, but to me it seems that lately, people have been unleashing a streak of madness during the evening commute.

The other night, I witnessed two City-types (our bus is from the City to the East End, so it's packed full of suits, laptop bags and the odd very posh school child normally) come to physical blows for no apparent reason.

One woman, sat by the window, was blocked in by another woman. Both were smartly dressed, respectable looking business people. I was lost in my own world of very loud earphones filling my brain with feeling alive and emptying the feeling of being at work, and trying to ignore the guy next to me who was clearly late for something. You know the type. Glancing at his watch every 3 seconds, huffing and puffing, and his knee jiggling against me like someone who's just returned from a particularly chemical-heavy rave and is still twitching to the now non-existent tunes.

As I tried to move away from Nervous Man, I noticed the woman next to the window stand up. I instinctively turned my headphones down from 11 to hear the commotion. The lady blocking her path simply refused to move. As in just point blank refused - she sat there like a stone. Now I have no idea if these women know each other but it did escalate into quite a scene of fisticuffs, people were visibly turning their ipods down to listen in...

A few nights ago No'rn I'ron and I got on the bus after work, she went upstairs as usual and I remained on the lower deck. (I don't like going upstairs if I am carrying my laptop, coat, handbag etc as I always feel like I am going to stack it down the steep stairs, I seem to be really at the mercy of inertia in that tiny stairwell)

I am losing myself in Twitter and tunes as usual when I get a text.

NI: "There is a woman in front of me emotionally abusing this guy - thinks she's Dita von Teese - more like her Nan. I l'il bit afraid"

Laughing, I reply:

"I just laughed out loud. WTF. I'm blasting out Jay-Z"

NI: "They comin!"

Alas the time it took to send the text down the stairwell of inertia, they'd gone and I missed them. Shame as I was looking forward to seeing an old Burlesque type, with her emotionally trapped boyfriend.

I flicked through my playlist and was enjoying some M.I.A., when my iPhone dinged again.

NI: "Help Me. Norn Irish guy won't stop talking to me and he's really drunk. For f*cks sake!"

Me: "What's going on today?! You should come downstairs"

NI: "He's goin to shout stuff! I may jump out window!"

Me: "What's he shouting? Tunes turned down but can't hear him...?"

NI: "Down his fone, that I'm young and good lookin but I won't talk to him!"

She actually looked traumatised when she came downstairs from being subjected to this, with the sympathy of the bus onlookers as they watched this drunk bloke sit next to her and talk about her to someone on the phone.

The worst commute was Thursday. We'd had a HUGE day at work on Wednesday, with the traditional night out afterwards, suffice to say, by 6pm Thursday we were both hanging by a thread onto our sanity and basic brain processes. We were ready for a nice, easy trip home to tea, toast and PJs.

Just to test our patience a little bit, the number 26 bus decided to stop outside Liverpool St station for a good 10-15 minutes, before deciding, yes, the indicators on the bus were broken, so we'd need to hop off.

At this point we had faces like thunder and there were no swear words that accurately conveyed our frustration. Now we could have made our lives easier and hopped on the tube one stop, but no, I had crap to carry and insisted we should just hop on the next bus going our way, easy.

We chose a Bethnal Green bus instead of our usual one and oh, how we regretted it. All seemed fine for the first five minutes, except the irritating chatter of other passengers, until the bus stopped and some skinny little London hoodrat got on and flashed his Oyster card. The driver must have said something about it not being valid, and this kid (looked about 14 but you never know) launched into a tirade of argument,

"Da fing is yeah, dis is VALID like, you should check da website man, check da website! " etc etc.

He might have had a point, I've no idea what the contentious issue was. BUT he carried on yelling in the driver's face for the next four stops. THE DRIVER'S LET YOU ON THE BUS ANYWAY, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?! Shut. Up.

The whole bus was watching this, except a massively annoying couple next to me who insisted on talking really loudly in the way you do when you know other people are listening. It was 'conversational' but in a 'how many big words can I get into this sentence? I might roadtest this loud discussion to showcase my surpressed stand up comedy desires' sort of way. They looked like the least fun couple ever.

Needless to say, this journey had taken over an hour and I was incandescent with rage. No'rn I'ron was practically in tears with tiredness and frustration by now; and on the verge of a massive two-year-old style paddy, and I was actually rationalising whether I could take this noisy chav idiot out with my laptop bag. (I came to the conclusion that, yes, yes I could, but since he was all up in the driver's grill, I'd endanger the lives of fellow commuters.) In all honesty though, since at that point I just HATED PEOPLE, perhaps I should have done everyone a favour and bowled my Dell right up the bus aisle into hoodrat's annoying face.

What is wrong with everyone?