I almost forgot

[mattchalk]

...to tell you about this thing that happened on the bus the other day when an 84 year old woman started assaulting a single mother with her walking stick. I was on the way to the city with Zoe cos we both wanted to do some job hunting. An old lady was sitting in one of the blocks of four fold up seats at the front of the bus that are reserved for the disabled and mothers with push chairs. Then a little way into the trip a young single mother got on the bus with her push chair, and asked the old lady to move since it was the only place she could put it seeing as a man in a wheelchair was occupying the other one. The old lady refused, started banging this really heavy walking stick on the floor saying "I'm not going anywhere, I'm 84 and I have a plate in my leg!". The young mother was pretty stubborn though and not realising she was onto a loser started arguing with the old lady about how it was reserved for push chairs, but the old lady wouldn't have any of it and started to insult her. Things got heated and the young mother tried to push her wheelchair in next to the old lady, but she started waving her stick about and kicking the pram a bit. The young mother then got furious at this (understandably) and started really having a go at the pensioner who even more furiously argued back with her, and stood up and they were both shouting in each others faces. The bus stopped at this point and the driver radioed for the old bill, me and zoe quietly got off the bus (there were enough people on the bus ready to hold them back if things turned really nasty) and went across the road to buy soem cold drinks cos it was reeeally hot out. When we returned the old lady was being questioned by a police woman who was saying about how she had left marks on the young mother and another lady who had tried to get in the way with her walking stick. I couldn't see the mother anywhere though.

So that was pretty weird anyway, I guess the lesson here is to respect the elderly or maybe to just avoid them or something like that.