by Ben Kritikos
You know those days when you’re so frustrated with the world, so itchy and restless that you could scrape your own face off with a tennis ball? I have more of these days between the months of January and March than all the other bits of the year combined. It’s the winter blues.
Some people don’t get the winter blues. Lucky bastards. But I do. I used to get solemn, depressed, melancholy — like a teenager constantly on the verge of tears because his/her hormones are more imbalanced than Mel Gibson.
That doesn’t happen anymore: now I go stir-crazy. Menopausal. Borderline personality. And it happens out of nowhere, not just on gray, dismal, drizzly days when the 214 drives right past you without stopping, as though the poxy cock-nose driving the thing didn’t see your schizophrenic semaphore. The 214 is the quintessential London-in-winter experience — it’s the bus from hell, the bus they refuse to upgrade to a double-decker, or even an articulated bus, because people may actually be able to sit down on it; the bus driven only by less-than-domesticated primates who seem to take pleasure in accelerating fast enough to splatter old ladies against the grimy handrails.
Enter the Dragon: the 214
