East End Muttering

I took my car to be serviced and get the MOT today. I have absolutely no affinity with cars at all. Men (and they are always men) who work in car service centres know this. They treat me with contempt as a lowly being who can be exploited and whose ignorance can be exposed. What delight they have (mor like relish) in announcing the terrible things they've discovered. I always feel like a naughty schoolboy - discovered in some terrible sin or something that I have done through error or omission. This time it was the tyres. The implication was that I've been driving badly, and certainly should have known that were beginning to wear thin.
The MOT was done by a firm glorying in the name 'Big Ron's'. Nuff said.
Having no car meant I could spend some time travelling by bus. I like London buses. People always want to talk - at bus stops, on the bus, although often they are talking to someone else (loudly on a mobile phone). They like to test the standard of their English - so I rarely end up sitting alone.
There were three incidents today. A boy was challenged by the driver over his age. He claimed 13 but the driver wasn't having it - insisting he was 16. The boy protested but the driver produced his trump card - if you're only 13 then why ain't you in school (it being 10 a. m. at that point. Boy leaves bus in a huff.
A woman disputes her Oyster Card reading with the driver, then sits down to discover a wallet on her seat. It appeared that it had been sitting there some time - but none of the other passengers would touch it for fear of what? Accusations, threats, moral dilemmas. Woman engages her neighbour in conversation about wallet, then (as neighbour really doesn't want to get involved) hands in to driver for safe keeping.
Thirdly I'm on the bus at close by the hospital a woman gets on and begins a series of phone conversations - extremely loudly: 'Raj is just lovely, I could have taken him home' 'Adorable' 'We went to physio - terrific, but nothing exciting' 'We went to S U - some kind of emergency department, there was this man with an enormous haematoma - hideous, gross, huge!' ' Then there was this other guy with stab wounds' ' You know this area is so frightening, I find it so scary. I'm on my way to the station, I'm going home. This area it is just so .....' At which point she realises that all the bus passengers are staring at her with a mixture of astonishment and venom!
Finally I return home from collecting the car (£400 lighter, although that did include an extension to the warranty!) to be greeted by a discussion on the radio about the desperate need for bodies at the various British schools of anatomy. Medical students need to start on the deceased before they begin on the living. As I have a fear of being buried alive, and cremation seems so awful somehow maybe I'll be changing my will to include a further charitable donation.