I got the bus into town for my final Arts Theatre gig, as the Central Line was closed. As the 94 trundled along past Notting Hill tube a man stood in front of me making a phone call. I wasn't really eaves-dropping -that's not my style. But I couldn't help overhear him deliver the one word "Police" into his mobile. He then waited, looking a littls shifty. There was only one possible explanation, he was ringing 999 and asking for assistance from our officers of the law. But why? I looked around the bus and no crime was obviously being committed. The man was twitchy and nervous and my fanciful imagination began constructing a scenario where he was ringing the police to inform them of some crime he was about to commit. Perhaps he was going to hijack the bus and demand it take us to Cuba (as in, I believe, an old Monty Python skit) or worse.
I focused in to hear what would happen next, fearing for my safety. But it turned out I was not the most paranoid person on the bus, as the fellow on the phone was clearly a little more touched than me.
He got through to the operator, "I want to report a crime," he said," I just got through to someone else a few minutes ago and they treated me very rudely. I am just trying to do my duty as a citizen."
He was seething a little and aggrieved at his previous slight, though it seemed unlikely to me that a 999 operator would be rude to someone ringing them up, unless that person was bothering them with some bogus complaint, such as the ones I mention in my show (such as the man who rang 99 because he had received an electricity bill that he had already paid).
It turned out that he had witnessed a couple of pickpockets stealing from people on another 94 bus - at least that's what he claimed. But his story seemed strange. He had been travelling on a 94 bus in the opposite direction, so why, just a few minutes later, was he heading back into town on the same route? The operator was also clearly confused by this as he had to reiterate this fact a couple of times. And why, if he had seen this crime, had he not just informed the people on the bus what was going on?
It all seemed a bit fishy, and also obviously from the operator's point of view, was a total waste of time. What did the man want the emergency services to do? There was nowhere of knowing where the bus he had been on was now, or indeed any way of finding the people he alleged had committed the crime. He was just clogging up the line for anyone who had a genuine emergency to report.
I noticed that he had a little knitted sock that he obviously kept his mobile phone in. If the operator could have seen this, she or he would have been able to ascertain that the man was a mentallist and hang up. Obviously the previous operator had managed to come to this conclusion. But this second operator managed somehow to get off the phone relatively quickly and politely. Perhaps they said "Well thank you sir, we'll get the force on to that one straight away," or possibly, "Sorry there's really nothing we can do, but thanks for your time." But the conversation managed to come to an end and the man looked slightly more satisfied than he had been that he had fulfilled his duty. He put his phone back in its sock and got on with his crazy life.
