In George Orwell’s finest novel, Coming Up For Air, which warns against the unthinking acceptance of modern things such as totalitarianism and tinned fruit, his protagonist, a middle-aged insurance salesman who embarks on a
Proustian journey back to his home town, orders frankfurters in a 1938 version of a fast food outlet.
Orwell uses the frankfurters as a striking symbol of a world going insane: “…Pop! The thing burst in my mouth like a rotten pear. A sort of horrible soft stuff was oozing all over my tongue. But the taste!…It was fish! A sausage. A thing calling itself a frankfurter, filled with fish!”
I’m reminded of that scene whenever I sit upstairs on a double-decker bus on the right side at the front. There’s no leg-room. I sit with my knees to one side, like an adult on a fairground ride for small children. These are seats that a man cannot comfortably sit in, at least not in the normal way.
I’m convinced the seats on buses have got smaller – either that or there’s more seats on them – but you only really notice it in those seats at the front.
And it makes me question all the feel-good propaganda pumped out by Chairman Ken’s Transport for London. Sure, there are more buses and the mayor is not niggardly about financing yet more. And yet, and yet… Whenever I get stuck with the front seats, I can’t help thinking of those frankfurters. The journey to a golden transport future might well be on a seat designed for a dwarf or child.
I never noticed this on the old Routemasters, which appear tiny when compared with the whopping new buses. While we’re on the subject of Routemasters, it’s always worth quoting what Chairman Ken, who abolished them in 2005, had to say about these old classics in 2001: “Only some ghastly, dehumanized moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster.”
The future’s bright, the future’s fishy.

Do you agree with Nick’s transport views? Email your thoughts to vthomas@
london.newsquest.co.uk.