"Young people these days, they've got no respect"

Sometimes in life, we make mistakes.

I made one on Wednesday.

Having already walked more than strictly necessary in a day, my poor tootsies could take no more, so, upon deciding to return home, I decided to take the bus. Unfortunately, it was the 3.20pm bus. The one that makes a detour to one of the local secondary schools to pick up some of those young whipper-snappers before depositing them back in their houses.

Now, all through my youth, my school year were informed that we were the worst behaved ever, but we had nothing on this lot. Seemingly they're all going deaf, as every single conversation was conducted at a ludicrous volume, even when the participants were seated next to each other. And of course if you want to talk to someone at the other end of the bus, why get up and move closer to them when you can just yell across everyone else's heads?

It would seem that most of them were struggling with English, judging by the somewhat limited vocabularies on display - and i never knew Anglo-Saxon was still being taught in this day and age. As with the conversations, so with the detritus - apparently bins are over-rated, rubbish is for throwing at other people. In addition to the scrunched up bits of paper and left-over lunches, the odd fist was flying too, with assorted grudges from the day taking a more physical turn.

I'm not entirely sure what purpose the endless banging on the windows served - maybe it's some tribal ritual denied to we older folks. Presumably along the same lines as the "endlessly singing one line from a song till any sane person would feel the need to smash your brains in" - Gwen Stefani was getting the treatment, lucky girl.

Still, it's good to know that a few years down the line, I'll be looking back and remembering how well-behaved they were compared to the new bunch who've come along to take their place...