I was travelling on the upper deck of a bus on the way to the British Library this morning. It was quite early for me and I was a bit tired and not really paying attention.
About twenty minutes into the journey I noticed that there was a TV screen at the front of the bus, alternating between different cameras in various locations on the vehicle. So you'd get a view of the top of the stairs, another view looking through the exit door, another at the bottom of the stairs and then one of the passengers on the top deck as seen from the front.
I could see myself sitting there about three rows from the front. I moved my head to check it was really me that was on screen and not either the stupid priest from Father Ted or Dom Joly. But it was me. Unless Dom Joly was doing an especially clever stunt in which he had access to the inside of my brain.
It seemed unlikely.
It suddenly struck me that for the last twenty minutes, every few seconds, unbenownst to me, I had briefly been visible to everyone on the top deck on this bus. And maybe people downstairs too, if they had a TV down there. For a moment I was delighted to be back on TV again, but then I was filled with dread.
What if I had been doing something embarrassing? It was early in the morning, I was a bit spaced out. I had almost certainly picked my nose at some point, possibly inspected whatever had found its way on to my finger. In all probability flicked it at the head of the woman in front of me, hoping it would become entangled in her hair and that she'd never know it was there or who'd flicked it.
And all this time everyone else on the bus might have been watching me and seeing my secret shame and passing judgement on me. Those groans of disgust I'd heard from the lower deck may well have been in response to me readjusting my genital package, or scratching my arse and then smelling my finger to see what it smelt like. Would it smell like an arse again this time or magically like lemon sherbert sweets or something? Only one way to find out.
What kind of a world are we living in when you can't even sit on a bus without taking part in some kind of cheap reality TV show? Are bus users lives so boring that they need to be entertained on their bus journey by a televisual representation of their own bus journey? At the very least, treat your passengers with some kind of intelligence and show them an image of what's going on on a different bus. Then they could feel smug about their own bus journey if their own bus is more interesting, or envious if the people on the other bus are having a better time.
And then if they absent-mindedly begin masturbating thinking no-one can see, then they won't have the embarrassment of having to directly face the people who've witnessed their crime. Unless they then get on another bus and that bus happened to have the live feed from the previous bus (unlikely odds) in which case they will be greeted with disgust/applause (delete as applicable depending on your masturbatory skills).
On the plus side, if you have a very empty life you can go on one of these buses and pretend you are taking part in a bus-based version of Big Brother, but where someone is always saying something libellous or rude, so the sound is always turned down. I suspect there is a channel on cable somewhere where you can watch this from the comfort of your own home.
Then I got off the bus.
