Yellow Honey Monster Bus

Rest one buttock on the edge of the seat towards the aisle, do not look out of the window or allow yourself to be seen aboard what was referred to as 'The Big Yellow Honey Monster Bus".

During the academic week the brightly coloured bus was on the school run with no particular attachment to a specific school or age group and with no great problems or stigma attached to being carried as a passenger especially if in uniform.

However, on a weekend when the bus was used to take us to Youth Orchestra practice it attracted the attentions and ridicule of otherwise quite normal and placid pupils or just members of the public who would gesticulate and hurl abuse at what they considered as (and I hesitate to repeat the following offensive words), a busload of remedial or somehow retarded kids being taken out for a saturday trip.

As far as I was concerned  this treatment by my peers was bad enough but to actually surrender half of a precious weekend to music practice only added further insult to the verbal and demonstrative injuries.

I was having trumpet tuition as an extra-curricula subject and a condition of taking up school time and resources was to relinquish some of my own leisure hours in the pursuit of a coming together of district musicians with the ultimate outcome in any one year being a grand concert to which Civic Dignatorys and mums and dads were invited.

I was understandably miffed at missing out on saturday TV on the bi-monthly incarceration on the dreaded bus and at some massive comprehensive school in the nearest large town.

Anything to do with playing my trumpet always made me quite hot and sweaty so as well as a feeling of indignation about the practice days I was always very uncomfortable and by mid afternoon probably not very pleasant to be down-wind of.

There were some very talented individuals attending who had the ability and inclination to actually take up a career in music. I hated them. They were always sat up front as the lead players in their particular brass, woodwind or string sections and flaunted in any conversational opportunities their current level of Royal School of Music gradings. They also looked better dressed, composed and probably had excellent packed lunches as well, you know the thing- Pate, croissant, freshly squeezed juice, home made fairy cakes and nutritious healthy snacks. I had usually eaten my peanut butter sandwiches, crisps, marathon bar and flapjack before the bus even arrived at the practice session.

I had no Music Grades and no hope within reason of actually attaining any. The day would drag on incessantly. The morning session was usually in sub groups working on a musical piece. I could seek refuge in the third or back row of the trumpet section and get away with miming or just getting enough air down the tubes to eke out a semblance of a tune if really pushed to do so. The only real fun in playing a trumpet was building up a massive amount of spit and bile which accumulated in the bottom tubing. When the tubes were full there would be a bubbling and gurgling sound signalling the need to vent and evacuate the trumpet of its bodily fluids by pressing a small valve key and blowing. The third row, known for its excess spit, soon took on the appearance of a bunch of bed wetters sat amongst their own pools of waste.

The afternoon session was a combination of all orchestral sections to work on the concert pieces.

Early on in the academic year the sound was excruciatingly bad and showed only very slow improvement for many months. The tutors had great ambitions and enthusiasm but must have been hearing something very different to what I was exposed to on the back row. The imagination of the noise made by the mass strangling of cats came to mind.

With immense relief the day would finish with only the bus journey to be survived.

In the winter months there was some security provided by the cover of darkness but in the summer we were an easy target for what would today be regarded as wholly politically incorrect behaviour by all those who encountered the bright yellow bus on its usually slow and laborious journey back to our starting point.