This time around there is a rhyme and a reason for my ramblings...

AS I was walking up the street, the pavement hard beneath my feet, I thought ‘hey, McMillan, it must be time to write your column all in rhyme – after all it can’t be hard because you are The Barnsley Bard and people think that’s all you do, making up a rhyme or two’.

So there and then I did decide to take these words for a rhyming ride.

I was going for the X19, a bus both frequent and quite clean. Well, not as frequent as it was and not always that clean because folk will insist on chucking stuff down on the floor, it makes me huff to see the cans all strewn around, the paper dropped onto the ground.

Well, when I say ground I mean bus floor, the bit just after the open door.

As I wandered to the stop, I broke into a kind of hop because the time was drawing near when my transport would appear and then I gazed upon my app, as useful as a warming cap, that told me when the bus would come, in several minutes or in some.

And luckily the app told me that the bus would come in two or three minutes so I hurried up like a thirsty chap who’s seen a cup of water in the desert heat and then at the stop I felt complete. At the stop the app told me the bus would come at five past three.

And lo, it did come round the bend, my joyful double decker friend. I got my bus pass, held it tight. Oh little symbol of delight: just show your card and climb right in, sporting your ridiculous bus pass grin.

The bus is half empty or half full; choose what you want but the trip’s not dull: a bloke is singing Sloop John B somewhere miles away from the key of C.

His voice is rusty and as flat as a kiddie’s drawing of a cat. I wouldn’t think he’s in a choir; if he said he was he’d be a liar. He would not win a karaoke because his voice was more foggy than smoky.

Every sound blasting from his throat was nowhere near his chosen note.

Luckily the bus had an upper deck; I said to myself ‘flipping heck now I can escape upstairs’ but something caught me unawares because as I got up and then sat down I heard something that made me frown.

A sound assaulted my ancient ears from a chap who’d had too many beers. If the bloke downstairs couldn’t sing a verse then the man upstairs was much much worse.

He was trying to sing that song ‘My Way’ and he sounded like a tin being hit with a tray. And he sounded like a tray being hit with a tin. To describe his voice I couldn’t begin but you know that noise when a toilet flushes or a pigeon flaps out of some untrimmed bushes?

Well that was the sound this ‘singer’ made; it wasn’t Elvis and it wasn’t Slade. It really wasn’t Frank Sinatra and it sounded like a storm on the edge of Sumatra.

Now I was in a kind of bind; neither sang very well (I’m being kind); one was upper deck, one was lower. I’d give one three out of ten, the other four. Then in a move that made me cringe and made a woman on the bus run her hand through her fringe they began to sing together which pushed me towards the end of my tether.

All the passengers tried to get off; the singing sounded like a cross between a burp and a cough. ‘Next stop please!’ we shouted as one, all of us regretting that we had got on. I rang the bell once or twice because the sound of the singing wasn’t very nice.

The duo raised the volume high and some babies on the bus began to cry. The notes flew up with an eerie peep and women on the bus began to weep. Both singers weren’t doing a very good job as the men on the bus began to sob. A thin kid climbed through the open window pane, ran through Ardsley and was never seen again.

I tried to get off the bus; I tried to make a noisy fuss but the driver shouted ‘you can suffer with me and I’m driving this bus ‘til ten past three’. I looked at my watch and nearly died of shock because it was only ten o’clock.

So think of me when you have your dinner; I’m stuck on the bus and I’m getting thinner. I’m writing this column all in rhyme to the sound of two chaps’ unmelodic whine!