Just don’t get this - waiting for the bus

In England the maximum single fare has been £2.00 any time of day on all buses for quite some time. It was meant as a temporary measure to encourage more people to start using buses again after Covid. It has certainly worked in our area and the scheme keeps being extended. I believe it is currently set to run until the end of this year.

It’s fun to wait for a bus. You can put up a pretend bench with a post and pretend you’re waiting for a bus or something fun like that

in London passes work from 9am for bus and underground.
Have just discovered its 9.30 for overground trains.
So I can get my train at 9.02 (joint underground & overground station), 9 minute journey - and my pass doesn't work at the destination station.
Bonkers

Thanks - I gathered that much from the thread context, just not what the word itself meant. Does the time limit apply to other things as well? The Wiktionary definition seemed to imply it.

My MIL does this.
what baffles me further is she has a perfectly good car sat in the garage but she’d rather spend four hours and three buses to get to a town 20 miles away than jump in her car because the bus is free.
keeps her good though.

I leave the house at 5am for work and pass an elderly lady every day, on the same road, walking with her shopping trolley toward the town centre. I think some are creatures of habit and also like to be out and about rather than sitting indoors alone.

Blimey, it's only 50p before 9.30am in County Durham

Aww I love the twirlies. I used to love when I was younger and getting the bus to work in my very smart uniform, they’d shower me with compliments.

My nan was the same. She would walk the shop for 7am every morning for the paper, she’d be showered, dressed immaculately and make up done. Everyday had an assigned task to it, religiously followed.

Tom O'connor (Liverpool comedian) was making jokes about this back in the 70's. It's always been used here.

For some, they'd rather wait outside were there is a bit of life, than home alone. The weather is nothing to them, they lived in a time with single glazing, inadequate heating etc. Some need a routine for tablet taking, or have a slow start waking up etc, which is why they stick to 10am shopping time. Those that can drive etc are often doing school runs. When I take my GC, there's more grandparents than parents. All of the free children's activities couldn't go ahead if it wasn't for the pensioners volunteering. They aren't necessarily people who have nothing else to do.

Agree. Why should they 'bugger off home'? They have the same right to be out in public that you do. The ageist attitudes on here are awful.

I used to work in a corner shop which opened at 8am. When I arrived at 7.45 there would be a queue of pensioners, and by 7.59 they would be rattling the shutters.

I think sometimes it's hard to sleep a lot as you get older and people want to get up and on with their day. I don't think I'll ever turn up at the bus stop 30 minutes early though!

Some shops like M&S also open for a half hour of "browsing" time before the tills can legally open.

When I was on my first mat leave and lonely and bored I used to do my errands as inefficiently as possible just to fill up the day and give me some purpose, and I suspect there's a not dissimilar thing happening with some retired people.

Supermarkets can open for six hours on Sunday provided it's between 10am and 6pm, which means some supermarkets open at 10am, some at 11am, some at 12pm. When people are waiting outside for 30 minutes it's usually just because they got the opening time wrong.

And yet your ageism is strong.

God bless em - they are up way to early with nothing else to do and they go and have a good chinwag at the stop and sometimes they get lucky and the driver lets them on early...although less so now Long live the "T'wirlies"

You still can't actually shop until the shop opens?!

Where I live you can use your free bus pass from 9am. I catch the 9am bus to work, which is full of other people going to work or college etc. But you also get your pensioners piling on, complaining how busy it is/no space...why not wait an hour when the buses will be less busy? I'm sure some have appointments but from the chat a lot just seem to be going shopping etc.

I don't know if it is universal, but in my area he would have been able to travel free to a hospital appointment before 0930 if he had the appointment letter

https://www.nexus.org.uk/concessionary-bus-fare

Who put you in charge of other people's shopping habits?

They enjoy the chat and sense of community spirit, and it's part of their daily routine. I live in Wales where transport is free all day long for the over-60s, so I miss the twirlies I used to see on my way to work when I lived in Manchester.

Your hatred of the elderly is oozing out of you.

Their travelling and shopping habits are nothing to do with you, so get over it.

my mum - despite my protestations to the contrary - firmly believes that where she lives there is only one bus an hour. I have shown her on the app but she just won't believe me.

And she gets to the bus stop around half an hour early, because she is petrified she is going to miss the bus. And is then surprised when a bus comes after 10 minutes ("ohhhh that's really late") when i said it would. So if she did that before 9 she wouldn't be able to get on.

There are lots of reasons why they might do that - i suspect it's lift related. It gets them out in the fresh air, and they have a chinwag.

I work for London Underground and the same gang of Twirlies turn up almost daily at my station 😆. They like to chat to the shop owners, to staff, and to anyone they happen to know going past. Then, at 9am when their passes kick in, all 10-15 of them go through the gates! 😂

Some of them live alone (they chat to staff as I said) and it's a social activity for them.

Because they will get on the bus and ask the driver 'Am I too early luv?' Some drivers let them on and some don't.