Despite what you'd think, it's an easier job since we got one-man buses. Some of the conductors were nightmares. At least now we have some control over our destiny.
Tube stations have luxurious staff toilets which bus drivers, who have none of our own, must ask permission to use. It's a disgrace. So we use the toilets in William Hill's, who are friendlier.
No experience compares to driving along Oxford Street and the concentration required. People keep walking in front of the bus and look quite angry if you keep going. You don't want to constantly hit the brake when there's standing passengers. Mums shoving their buggies out into the road are the worst - usually on mobiles, talking to someone other than their child.
When The Restraint of Beasts was published [1998, Booker Prize shortlisted] I packed in driving buses. I thought I was going to live the life of a writer, sitting in pubs drinking Guinness. But I like having a day job, too. I can only write, it turns out, when I have no apparent spare time.
If you don't want to eat junk food while you're driving, it's important to have a good breakfast. I've had the same caff breakfast for three years. Toast, marmalade, poached egg, hash browns, black pudding, two mugs of tea. But if I could survive on a tablet, I would. Then I could spend an hour in perfect peace, not thinking about getting fuelled up.
Every bus shelter has a poster for a film on it. Most have an actor posing with a gun, and often it's pointing at people waiting for a bus.
I don't like repeating a word on a page, let alone in a paragraph. But there's one word I didn't realise I used twice in a paragraph in The Restraint of Beasts. I'm getting it changed before another reprint. But it's my secret which word.
Most schoolkids don't show their passes. Ken Livingstone made a great mistake letting them travel free. There's a whole generation growing up who think it's a right rather than a concession, and it's us who have to deal with it.
It was very breezy up on Mount Fuji, and very remote. Striding through the soft ash feels like bouncing on the moon.
The travelling public won't understand, but we're never told over the radio to travel faster. We only get messages to slow down, to stop for one or two minutes. It's about maintenance of headway. No drivers would personally choose to be late, because then you get more passengers to deal with. But we're only admonished by inspectors for earliness.
There was a bloke who said he was going to get his knife out and stab me because I wouldn't let him travel with an open can of alcohol. The next day he was at the same bus stop and he was very apologetic and said he didn't carry a knife and that the alcohol had mixed with his medication. He's now one of my best mates whenever he gets on the bus.
If you live in the immediate vicinity of a fire station, like I have, you don't suffer crime of any sort. Firemen have a lot of time on their hands and run outside if there's any trouble.
I try to be more tolerant nowadays. I think Ian Paisley set a good example. If he can be tolerant to Martin McGuinness, I can be tolerant in the morning to someone who swims in the wrong direction in a swimming-pool lane.
I'm only really interested in the position of the bus in front of me and the one behind.
