Bloody buses down bleedin' Bank Street....

Today I witnessed the battle of Bank Street. We had car horns honking, people shouting and swearing at a disabled driver, irate bus drivers trying to squeeze buses through a tiny gap (and failing!) shopkeepers and postmen bouncing a car which was obstructing the traffic. What was the cause of all this mayhem? Wait for it.... an elderly disabled driver of the car, mentioned above, had left his vehicle parked near the corn exchange building while he went to get some tablets from the nearby chemists. He was gone for all of about 7 minutes! The bus driver, apparently so afraid to be behind on his Ariva-in-time bus schedule, that he lost all sense of proportion and instead of waiting (which clearly was the only sensible thing to do in the circumstances) moved things out of the way on the pavement, called for the car to be bounced out of the way by passers by, and then rather unskilfully managed to take off a panel from the bottom of the bus side, smashing a stone step in the process and nearly smash in the back door of the jewellery shop as the panel went flying. The damage done to the step of this shop are proof enough that you don't want to get in the way of these beasts (the buses that is, not the drivers!) We then had the scene with some young Rambo wannabe effing and blinding at the bus driver as he wrote down the details of the car driver. It's a wonder that no puches were thrown as the air became more testosterone filled with every passing second. Are we so busy these days that we can't just see the funny side and take a breather for a few minutes; are we so bent on achieving the targets of out of touch and more and more distant employers, who just don't listen to excuses. Can we not just slow down a bit, not get so worked up and spare a thought for the old bloke whose only crime was that he just happened to nip out to the pharmacy with his prescription on the wrong day at the wrong time. In any case Bank Street really is wholely inappropriate for the purpose of turning round single, let alone double decker, buses so some of the blame for this incident must rest with the council (Kent or TMBC, I'm not sure which one, and there lies another problem.) I'm not sure what the alternative is but there must be a better one than the narrow streets of the old market area. Still it will be an interesting one for the insurance companies to sort out....