8th September 2014

In my time on the internet I have had 'met' a lot of different people from different cultures and from all over the world. I have witnessed some really unbelievable things on the internet and some real stupidity. I learnt from very early on, never get into arguments with people because you can't walk away because they are always there on the screen. I always block and ignore prats like that. 

Then there's the people that you show kindness to, listen to their problems, give them advice, sit there for hours watching those words waffle on and on in a never ending stream on your screen. 

I have had three online stalkers, two from abroad, one from the UK. I got into argument after argument with my wife because of this, we even nearly split up over one of them. Not good.

Why is it that some people do such a thing? I'm not a nasty person, I will help anyone, that's just how I am. Life is always a challenge in whatever one does. It's about different circumstances and ventures. 

I was a bus driver in London and a coach driver for National Express for a total of twenty five years. When I first started the job it was fun, you got to know your regulars and you had a laugh, I even got birthday and Christmas presents. But nowadays it is a very different story being a bus driver. Everyone is on your back, having a go at you for being late, you turn round and tell them something has happened further down the road, road works, accident or just a build up of traffic, but what happens? Oh you're lying. No matter what the driver says, he or she is lying, 

Bus driving is a very difficult job. people just think it's easy, but it isn't. What with all the idiots on the road that think it's funny to cut a bus up, or pull out in front of a bus, making it brake sharp making the passengers have a go at the driver or put in a complaint about the driver, the driver, no matter what he or she does, is in the wrong in the eyes of the public and, surprisingly enough, the company he works for as well. Even when he is in the right, he really is in the wrong, it's not a case of being innocent until proven guilty being a bus driver, it's a case of being guilty until proven innocent. I know how people felt facing the hangman in the old days.

I had a very minor accident at Clapham one day. A white van man overtook the bus on a corner and caught the front of the bus with the back of his van. I caught up with him at a set of lights about a mile further on. I shouted across to the van driver that he had hit the bus and I wanted to have a word. I got out of the bus and walked across the two lanes, we were side by side, as I walked across in front of his van he put his foot down and threw me up in the air about ten foot and made land on a car which was about ten feet away. The police caught him and the excuse was 'he never saw me.' I could understand that if I was a small guy but I am 6'5" tall and not exactly small. What did the company say? No they didn't ask if I was okay, they were just worried about the damage to the bus, which was a small scrap on the front of the bus, the van came off worse.

There were three 'incidents' in a short space of time where I got attacked, the last one was a group of drunks and they were the final straw, they were the reason that my mind got f***ed up, and I got diagnosed with PTSD after taking a massive overdose and ended up dying in hospital, shame they brought me back, they really should have left me dead.

The day of my overdose, I wrote on Facebook what I intended to do, I got my medication and popped 347 tablets into a small sandwich box, went to the shop, brought a small bottle of vodka, I made my way to a park where my wife and I had some laughs when we first started going out together, which was beside the river Thames and watched the swans and a guy fishing.

As I did this I was taking handfuls of pills and drinking the vodka, I didn't want to live, I thought was about to lose my wife and children, I thought no-one cared, I was in a very bad place.

I don't remember what happened next, but apparently I called the ambulance, I do remember the hallucinations, jeez they were scary, and one of my Facebook friends saw what I had wrote and told her husband, God rest him, and he phoned Scotland yard all the way from America, who in turn phoned my local police station. I had the police looking for me, they even sent their helicopter up to look for me. Amazing.

So when you travel by bus don't have a go at the driver for anything, it's 99% of the time, not his fault, he is there to do his job, he is in charge of that vehicle and if he tells you something then do what he asks, even if you think he is wrong, as I said 9 times out of 10 he is right and think before you start writing those letters, don't you think his job isn't difficult enough? It is a fact that bus driving is the second most stressful job in the UK behind a doctor.