These transcripts are brought to you from Britain’s largest recorded collection of bus tickets, curated by one Joan Clarkson. The Transport History Foundation would like to honour the dedication of Ms Clarkson, who worked tirelessly collecting these discarded tickets during her own journeys as well as from her fellow passengers. These are the transcriptions of some such bus tickets from the route 14B bus to Finefield Alley, with entries ranging from the 9th of August 2018 to the 29th of March 2019.
Collector’s Note: During the autumn of 2018 I started to notice notes such as these on my bus ticket, scribbled messily and sort of obscured beneath the ticket’s various numbers and barcodes. On closer inspection I worked out what the notes said, wrote them down, and kept the tickets along with the transcripts in an old photo album.
9th August 2018, 08:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘My darling, you know I am no master of words,
I have no skill,
I have no flourish,
All I have to offer you is this here, my courage.
I have my hands to hold yours, my love,
The melody I sing to is your laughter,
And my odes to your beauty,
They are my smiles every morning,
They are the coffees going cold in my hands,
And the heart getting warm in my chest,
They are the roses I picked up at the supermarket.
This poem, like all of my poems, is terrible,
But you are every good thing in my life,
Don’t ever forget xxx’
‘Darling, I love you too, but my answer is still no. It’s your turn, and I’m tired, and I’m not making dinner tonight xxx’
Collector’s Note: Over time I became obsessed with these mysterious notes, somehow preserved in the machine and spat out onto my ticket every so often, like a puzzle especially for me. I began paying for singles instead of returns so I would get twice as many tickets – doubling my chances of getting a note – scanning the floors of the bus for discarded ones, and even asking the other passengers for their used tickets. Gradually I had found and put together enough tickets to work out that the notes were all written by the same two people, a couple.
17th September 2018, 09:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘To my love,
The happiest of birthdays to you! I have a surprise for you when we get home…
xxx’
‘This better not be another surprise party, I still can’t believe the mess last year made. You know that wine stain is still there underneath the throw blanket?’
23rd October 2018, 08:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘She is the one
I’ll dance with to the end of time,
She is the soul
That was made along with mine,
At the end of a long night,
She is my sun,
After a winter’s brutal blight,
She is my spring.
She is the one.’
Collector’s Note: After I had gathered so many of these tickets, my curiosity was strong enough that I began asking around, researching, and chatting to the bus drivers to work out what was happening. After a few probing questions, an examination of the ticket machine, and a visit to a certain thermal paper roll manufacturer and paper converter, I solved the mystery. It turned out that the writers were two employees of this company, one working in the paper factory and the other in the quality control department.
8th November 2018, 16:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘Four reasons why you should forgive your loving, wonderful, incredibly apologetic fiancé immediately:
1. I promise to bring you breakfast in bed every Saturday from now on.
2. I will clean the entire house including the bathroom.
3. I swear to watch all your favourite horror movies with you tonight and I won’t complain or be dramatic afterwards about strange noises in the house.
4. I’m very, very, very sorry.’
‘Perhaps I’ll forgive you. But only if you do all the washing up this week as well.’
17th December 2018, 08:43 14B to Finefield Alley
‘Just spoke to Angela, she said she could swap shifts with me so I can come with you to the doctor next week xxx’
Collector’s Note: The factory employee would write notes on the ends of the paper rolls for his fianceé, one of the quality control officers, to see when she checked them. She would occasionally reply, remove the roll from the box, and slip those notes back to him at the factory. However she was not the most vigilant of workers, and so would often respond and forget to remove the roll, leaving the box unattended.
24th January 2019, 09:33 14B to Finefield Alley
‘I will miss you,
Most assuredly,
Like the shore misses the sea,
I will miss you,
Whole-heartedly,
Like the spring flower misses the bee,
I will miss you,
Endlessly,
Like a tree that lost all its leaves,
And I will await your return,
Like the swallows from the South,
Back home to me.’
Collector’s Note: I tracked down a few individuals who had worked for the manufacturing company at the same time that the writers had worked there. One of the other quality control officers admitted to me that she would often send boxes of paper rolls off to shipping, assuming they had been cleared with her colleague. Of course, it turned out she was usually mistaken, and some of the notes, including the replies, would get sent to the bus company.
14th February 2019, 16:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘To my one and only valentine,
On this Valentine’s Day,
I have this,
And this only to say,
For you I wish only,
The happiest of times,
The sweetest of wines,
As wonderful as mine,
When you are near I do not fret,
The world has gone quiet,
I know we are set,
With our wonderful life,
The only thing left,
Is to make you my wife.
(P.S. I can’t wait to marry you on Saturday xxx)’
Collector’s Note: I concluded from my research that a few of the paper rolls that the Sonneteer – as I fondly call him – had written on were sent off to the bus company and accidentally fed into the ticket machines, ending up just about engraved into my and so many other people’s bus tickets, barely noticeable to the naked eye.
29th March 2019, 09:23 14B to Finefield Alley
‘I wanted so badly for you to stay,
To go to the beach again,
The park, maybe someday,
A glimmer of hope, and we’d be okay,
Instead I’m back here, the worst day of my life,
And the tears keep welling up,
And everyone knows why.
I couldn’t even say goodbye.
Now I can’t fall asleep at night.
My hands reach for you.
But it’s just empty space,
A blank line.
I just don’t understand why the house feels so quiet.
I just hope you’re still reading this, in some way, some life.’
Collector’s Note: Sadly during my research I also concluded that the quality control officer the Sonneteer had been writing to had passed away four weeks before the 29th March ticket entry was written.
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