THE WORLD OF TRANSPORT

Mass transit has become an integral and essential part of modern day life, and I would like now to examine the role this has played, since its beginnings, in the over all development of our technological pizza base.
Undertakers and gravediggers the world over are keen to promote Public Transport. It cuts their overheads in half, and makes for a shorter working week.
It has been said that if God had meant us to travel, He would have given us tickets, but the fact is the big one Himself was once a bus driver, and advised his only son Jesus to get into the transport business, rather than all that preaching stuff. Jesus did not live up to his daddy's expectations.

THE TRAIN
By Justin Time

The train was invented by Fred Shuntyard, 1763 to 1927, who detested riding on buses so much his trousers fell down every time he thought about it. His spit powered engine came a full twelve years before Stevenson's Rocket, and over one hundred before the first bus. This was what made the invention so incredibly inventive.
Prototype number one consisted of the Engine and nothing else. It had no carriages. With a top speed of seven miles per hour, passengers were attached to the Engine by knotted and unbreakable string, and dragged along behind as it went. This proved most effective until people realized it was cheaper, and quicker, to stay at home. With the bottom falling out of the newly born railway industry Fred Shuntyard tried a new innovation: Passengers were each equipped with a pair of roller skates before being attached to the locomotive. This made the journey much less tiring, though brought about another problem: frequently the people using that new form of public conveyance would actually travel faster than the train itself.
Complaints began to flood in, and Fred soon realized there was but one solution: All passengers were shot dead before the journey began. As a result the sales of onboard refreshment, usually sloshed out by the engine driver, plummeted. It seemed that no matter what Fred did, it brought about its own set of problems. One week, things got so bad he committed suicide three times.
The final straw that broke the camel's back came with the introduction of a new type of train; one which boasted carriages and sitting down equipment. It lacked a functioning engine, but people seemed not to mind.
And then, once upon a time, a man called David Peter Allen Stopgarden, or George Stevenson, as his mother called him, invented a steam-powered train with coach and seats and everything. There was only one problem: George insisted that only steam powered people be allowed to travel on it, and they were few and far between. Within weeks though he submitted to pressure, steam pressure, and announced that everyone who wished to journey with him be allowed, providing they knew the Queen, had met the Queen, or owned a original copy of a mass produced photographic drawing of the Queen. If these requirements were not met they could instead buy a ticket for the reasonable sum of plenty.
The age of locomotive travel had begun, and by its first birthday it could already say, "Mamma, Pappa," and "googagee."
Never again would life be the same. The world opened up. People quickly acquired a taste for travel and adventure, with Londoners venturing, sometimes, as far south as Dover. Once there they normally stopped at the Channel, when their feet got wet. Some of the more creative and eccentric passengers walked on their hands in an effort to get around this problem, but it looked too silly, and they gave up.
Lines were laid from Dundee to Kapmandoo. This was fine unless you wanted to travel to Birmingham, in which case you walked.

Today the Railway system can take you everywhere you don't want to go, and a few other places besides. Trains arrive late with a punctuality bordering on the extreme, occasionally failing to get there at all. With the advent of the T.G.V in France, an engine which travels in access of 200 km per hour, it is now possible to arrive at your destination thirty minutes before you set off- and yet still be late!

THE BUS
By Ima Fool

During the second half of the first quarter of the 20th century, a man named Mr. Omnibus invented the very second form of public wheeled transport. It featured one main innovation, that being the capability of movement. Up until then all modes of riff raff carriage had been permanently stationary, which resulted in many people arriving late to the office. Mr. Omnibus not only introduced the bus to the peasant stock of industrialized England, but also the bus ticket: a small slip of printed-paper to be thrown upon the ground whilst alighting, thereby providing employment to hundreds of street cleaners. The double-decker bus was of course invented in Great Britain, but what few people realize is that is was preceded by the triple-decker bus, featuring a functional basement. Strangely this innovative design never caught on.

Music became an important part of the early morning bus ride. Symphonic orchestras, from numerous countries and street corners, entertained commuters during their short voyages from one place to somewhere else. Bus conductors not only occupied themselves with the waving of batons, but distributed tickets during the slower passages of music. It was a wonderfully romantic period in the people moving sector, and the heart throb King George himself was a regular passenger on the #16 Battersea to Wimbledon route. Persons began to sell their cars, bicycles we recycled, and resold as deodorant hair sprays, guaranteed to kill 99% of all known germs; motorbikes disappeared from the streets. Everyone, or so it seemed, just everyone wanted to get in on this knew bus thing. This though was far from the truth: Mrs. Agness Swane, of 18 Cobble-cock St. showed no interest in Buses, or indeed any other thing. Agness had in fact been dead for the past three years, though this had gone unnoticed by her husband, who spent most of his time on the upper deck of the 27a Lewisham bus.
Today, some seventy years later, things have changed somewhat. Gone are the once familiar cut crystal chandelier's, no more the complementary bottle of vintage champagne with optional sex partner, noticeable by their absence the variety entertainers and mouth singers. Travel by bus has become the humdrum tedium best left to foreigners. Take last sunnight for example: there I sat, in my usual sitting position, watching the world go by at an average speed of one inch per weekend. The bus was a number seven, which indicate strongly its lack of speed, for you see it had been a number three when I first got on. The person that I am began to glance about the place with well-practiced eye movements, foot movements, and leg twitchings. There was a well-hatted gentle man sitting just opposite from me. He carried a bendy twisty coiled up metal thing, which looked vaguely familiar, and pleasantly obscene. I tried to imagine what activities he would get up to, once in the privacy of his living station, but with out success.
"Do you Suck Sess?"
"Yes, and she loves it."
Further down the isle I spotted a member of the opposite sex. She was busy grazing on a delicious looking "Mars Bar", and noticed not my hungry eyes. How I would have liked to have bitten into that: to lick it and devour it. I turned my attention from her ample bosom and notice the chocolate looked good too. Just beside that one was a man picking his nose. Rather than use his finger he seemed to be harpooning the bogies with a toothpick, which he then inspected and offered to the person next to him for consumption. Down near the front a partial female stood in comic concentration. A strangely clad thing in seventeen layers of cloth pieces, which were at once bendy twisty and rather coiled up. She was an incredibly lumpy looking person, and her shape suggested a marvellous toshability. Strapped about her head was a pair of headphones, the wire for which disappeared inside her coat and lead to God knows where. As she stood there, listening to the music, she began to sway to its rhythm, virtually breaking into several dances at the same time. Every one began to stare at her misshapen shape as it jiggled about the bus, and some actually got up and jiggled with it. I sighed a light sigh, smoked a light cigarette, and drank a light beer. Turning to the back of the bus my eyes came upon the semi living form of a street person, who chatted to the disinterested passenger beside him.
"I saved up for three years for this bus ticket," he said, waving a chewing gum hockey card to his co traveller.
"That's not a bus ticket," replied the other, "that's a chewing gum hockey card."
"What?! What!?" cried the tramp. "I've been cheated! Swindled! Three years savings gone! It's just too much."
"Mmmm."
"The last straw I say," where upon he opened the bus window and threw himself out, out, out; promptly landing on a frail and aged passer-by, who died of shock, and provided a soft landing for the tramp.
"Foiled again," I heard him say, as the driver skilfully manoeuvred the bus around a corner. This impressed me no ends: the street you see was straight.
With only moments to spare we arrived at my stop. I got off the bus in a rather incredible and spectacular manner, for the doors never actually opened. It was all over with. The bus began to disappear into the night, and a good thing too. And then horror of horrors, I realized I had left my imagination on the empty seat beside where I had been.
"Stop! Stop!" I cried. "Stop! Stop," but the bus did not hear me, and continued on its way. "Stop! Stop!" I made one last plea, using up the rest of my vocabulary in the process. A hooded person walked towards me, looking none too happy.
"Don't shout so loud," he whispered.
"I'm not shouting loud," I contradicted. "It's your ears that are listening too much!" And he continued on his way.
So there I was, my imagination lost forever, and I just don't know what else to say.

THE AIRPLANE
By Costa Fortune

The very first plane invented was a non-flying version. The very second a none swimming, and the very ninth a total failure. It was not until the Wrong brothers came along that things began to take off, at least in a small way. The Wrong brothers, who were in reality cousins, discovered the universal law of motion that Einstein overlooked: All airborne objects actually dislike being above the ground, and will have a tendency to crash, bounce, or wobble. This law brought about the arrest of several flying policemen.
The wings section, now made of plastic alloy, was once constructed from dried and pressed cabbage leaves, which also provided nourishment for the passengers. During that experimental period of flight many passengers, and some plain and simple passers-by, fell from those soaring vehicles, tumbling thousands of feet down, down. Had it not been for the ground breaking their fall it would have meant certain death.
As time passed, flying became increasingly safe. Indeed, so safe it was almost a bore. It was then that hijackers were first introduced to the travelling public, providing light relief and dramatic distraction on those long transatlantic flights. These proved popular, but too sporadic in nature. Airline companies simply could not rely on the undisciplined and generally unstable terrorists to provide any consistently tumultuous dangers on a regular basis. This led them to cut corners on maintenance, fire pilots and replace them with taxi cab drivers, install outside toilets on all wide bodied 747's, and encourage rust and metal fatigue when ever possible. It was also at this time the airline industries catch phrase was born:

SAFETY FIRST- BUT PROFIT BEFORE THAT

THE HOBBY HORSE
By Tanya Hide.

The humble hobbyhorse has fallen from popularity in recent years, though there was a time when it provided the only transport alternative. Made from an old broom, wool for a mane and cut cardboard for a head, its aesthetic value should not be overlooked in this time of computerized, deodorized, subsidized and mangleized travel. It does not pollute, is highly cost efficient, inexpensive to manufacture, and runs on the imagination.