Do People Really Piss on Buses?

I've been threatening to post some poems for some time and coming across a box full of hand-written (what else was there in those days) lyrics from my youth was quite an incentive to actually do so.

This particular poem is about a period when I and some similarly bored low-paid friends used to hang out on buses... yes really. We would buy a ticket called a rover which allowed us to travel all over the City of Peterborough and it's districts on a double-decker. I would like to think that we did something constructive on these trips but all that happened was that we would arrive at the terminus wait while the driver had his fag break (usually in the bus) then returned from whence we came. In fact we may well have been the rowdies that the poem refers to, and ironically (lost on me at the time of writing) the people that I seem to sneer at for always being on the buses almost certainly had a lower opinion of me and my friends for exactly that same reason.

The poem was written in Mid December 1982 at time when economically things were pretty tough in the UK. Reading it back it was clearly inspired by John Cooper Clarke and I find that I still recite it at speed in a nasally northern accent.

Note: I subsequently found a later draft if anyone noticed that the post has changed slightly.


Do People Really Piss on Buses?

And People say you're eighteen now
Why haven't you got a car?
But they' must be blind if they can't see

that YOP* money doesn't get you very far.
So it's a double-deck in shades of red,
Fag-ends, Graffitti (Punx not dead)
And Wander-bus tickets that'll take you anywhere
Down to the Cornwall Coast where they breathe pure air
But It's all in vain

'Cause they take you back to the city man, where
It's the toxic fumes of a rapidly declining industry
One thousand more bodies thrown on the heap
And what do we blame? the Japanese imports
But all you gotta do, is sell your GTI and ends may meet
Hey! you could always use our public transport.

So what's with this mid evening rush
Same faces same time
A social crime of deprivations and

sexual frustrations
To shout Bingo! the highlight of their night

Then there are the rowdies at the back
Who shout off their mouths
Then immediately feel daft
'Cause nobody laughs

And their jokes on them.

And as my night plays out in short start stops
I perceive this awful smell of Christ knows what
Which brings me back to the point

I originally meant to raise

Do people really piss on buses?

Copyright Erroll Jones

* Youth Opportunities Program

Kate and James:

It was a real pleasure to see my beautiful and quite wonderful friend KPs get married to her equally wonderful and good looking beau James. It's great to see a couple so perfectly matched and any one lucky enough to know them or to have been there on the day can verify what I say.

The brief was straight forward capture the day as it happens with little or no posed shots. My kind of brief as posed shots is not really what Rahul (My very able assistant) and I do. I distinctly remember Kate saying "Hurry Up with the pictures man, I want to get back to the canapes." And that was only after 10 minutes alone with her and James, so she really did mean little or no posed shots. Still, we managed to get a few good shots before they went back to the prized canapes.

The light in Pembroke Lodge was just a wee bit to harsh as it streamed through the glass roof during the service but turned to quite glorious as the day turned into night. So, some great opportunities for us to document the dinner and speeches and get some really special moments. Which I've been told we did.

The evening was a riot: I've yet to see a livelier wedding party with Bride & Groom and the Best Man ably setting (and maintaing) a hectic pace which kicked-off with 'Outkasts' brilliant Hey Ya before taking in hip-hop, indie and some classic soul. I even summoned the energy to hit the dance-floor myself, which my friend Emma told me is not a particularly good sight but hey, what the hell.

Lucky umbrella update: This is getting boring now but in the two week run up to this wedding it was forecast rain rain and heavy rain for the wedding day but as you can see from the photos the lucky umbrellas were far from required.

This week: Erroll did very little outside of a very busy schedule that included awards ceremonies, a very Glamorous 5oth Birthday at The Berkley Hotel and shooting some rather swanky office refits.

Kate & James Pre-wedding

Apologies for not blogging regularly, but will make a much bigger effort from this moment onwards. Recently I had the pleasure of doing the pre-wedding shoot for the gorgeous Kate & James a perfectly matched couple in every way.

Unfortunately for them they were my guinea pigs somewhat as I took the opportunity (and advantage of the fact that Kate is a good friend) to try out new equipment that I'd recently accuired

It was a blue sky blaring sun of a day (cold in the shadows mind) so they had to be very patient while I grappled with back-lighting, fill-in flash, lens flare on top of the new gear I was trying out.

They were great to work with and were quite happy to do countless takes of the shots I set up and managed to laugh their way through a lot of the session which bodes well for the actual wedding day.

For the techies that may read this the equipment I was trying out was;

Canon 1D mk iv;

Canon EF 45mm f2.8 Tilt-shift;

Canon EF 70-200 f2.8 is mk ii; and a borrowed

Canon 5D mk ii

This week: Erroll despite owning a 'Kindle' bought two hard back novels; David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet as they were both considerably cheaper than their electronic version... that can't be right.

He also watched the brilliant French prison movie A Prophet and the equally brilliant and dark Australia western The Proposition.