The Big Smoke

My name is Peter and I am a bus nerd. Not to the point of disfunctionality, but certainly enough to earn me strange looks if I say too much in the wrong sort of company. One of my particular weaknesses is to go a bit misty-eyed when a real London bus route crops up in literature - something that can happen in the most unexpected places, such as in this double-page spread from children's classic 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'.

The bus we can see in the distance is the No 72, which then as now travelled to and from Roehampton, allowing us to place the action of this unusual tale - in which a tiger comes to tea and drinks all the father's beer - as taking place somewhere between Roehampton and East Acton; Barnes seems a particularly likely location. For me, this seems strangely important, grounding a magical tale in some hard London reality.

One particularly memorable use of London buses in literature comes from BS Johnson's brilliant 'Albert Angelo', in which the eponymous protagonist ponders bus numbers while returning home from a football match at Stamford Bridge.

'I catch with my father a number twenty-seven bus several minutes after arriving at the bus-stop in Hammersmith Road at the end of North End Road. We could have caught a number nine or a number seventy-three, to place them in numerical order, had either of these splendid numbers been opportune... The numbers are related: the square root of nine, three, multiplied by nine gives you twenty-seven; and seven added to three brings you to nine again, if you take one off. Furthermore, there is a three in seventy-three. The numbers of these three (again!) buses running along the Hammersmith Road are not related by accident, these things are no coincidences. Anyone who thinks they are accidents or co-incidences. Anybody who thinks they are accidents or co-incidences probably does not believe in parthogenesis either. To say nothing of god. But no one ever says nothing of god. I feel that this may well be a large part of the trouble.'

Psychogeography then, and a decade before Iain Sinclair. However, experts will not that the No 73 no longer travels along Hammersmith Road, rendering this something of a period piece.

If this sort of thing floats your boat, you should check out Buses on Screen, a terrifying catalogue of appearances by buses in TV and cinema.