How to get educated: the Megabus

Roughly half a decade ago I was eighteen years old and had followed in Mum’s footsteps: I’d moved to Manchester. Having grown up in rural, sheltered and not at all well connected or known to others Norfolk, I was in for a shock when moving up North.

Everything was different: the people, their accents and the sense of humour. On reflection it turns out that I genuinely and generally prefer those three things up there. It really is funny having to explain that Norfolk is a real place.

Living with nine others all the same age I stood out for being the only one who said “ba - r - th” instead of “ba - h - th”. Naturally, to those flatmates who later became friends, I was a posh farmer who voted Tory.

It’s true that I didn’t realise I had grown up in the countryside until I went to the city. Even more so, I didn’t know I was middle-class! Ah university, a place to learn. A mate from Sunderland - in my first week of being there  - kindly explained to me how the traffic light system worked, assuming we didn’t have that where I came from.

Another time after a few weeks of living together a friend said to me:

“you know what Evan you’re actually alright, not that pretentious after all”.

A compliment of the highest order. I learned to develop the skill - and it is a skill - of self-deprecation, of laughing at myself. This is something I now consider to be integral to my so-called university education. Although not all too useful on a CV.

After a month or so we were all settled. The boys had learned to cook pasta from the girls (at least, I'd learned how to cook pasta from the girls). And joy repeatedly echoed round the university halls laundry area: people were learning how to use the washing machine! Lest we forget the dryer.

Myself included.

A friend of mine, Jacob, had also started university at the same but in Lincoln. We arranged for myself to come and visit him. I booked a bus, the Megabus, from Manchester to Leeds and then a train from Leeds to Lincoln.

Something about Mum’s lower earnings meant that I was given - really gifted - a larger than average student loan then and throughout all of university. This fact, my later part-time job and a kind of frugalness (in the loose sense of the word) when taking transport and in general life allowed me much financial freedom to visit places across the 3 years. To say nothing of generous grandparents.

For this I am incredibly lucky and grateful. It simply is crudely unfair; but, that's how it was for me I made the most of it, in my own way.

Growing up with stories of Dad’s essentially exotic travel planted the seed of adventure deeply within me (and genetics). Regardless of how lucky or unlucky I was with finances at that time, it was something I knew I’d work towards and pursue one day. The way it was at university gifted me opportunities to do it much sooner than perhaps many, many people.

My first major journey was on the Megabus.

The Megabus today connects most of the UK’s towns and cities with each other at low cost. Sometimes selling tickets for £1, although I’ve never had one. It was common enough, however, to get a ticket from Manchester to London for between £4-6.

It’s very, very, cheap. It’s a bit uncomfortable, sometimes people smoke in the toilets or behave ‘oddly’, depending of course on how you define odd. Personally I love it. It’s what I  used to get home or go to different places.

In most of my time spent working in those times - and to a lesser extent now - I converted my hourly wage of £7 ish into it’s worth for bus, train and even aeroplane journeys. For example, a five hour shift makes £35, which could afford me a 400 mile round trip from Manchester to Norfolk and back.

Better still, Manchester to Dublin with Ryanair was commonly priced as a return at the same price. A fact I find simply ridiculous. The trick is not to buy a sandwich mid flight.  Twenty of these five hour shifts could essentially pay for a return ticket around the globe and back to Australia.

As a reference point you can use this website to calculate your earnings respective to the rest of the world*. If you earn £15,000 a year/£312 a week/minimum wage in the UK, and have no children, then you're roughly in the top 9% of earners in the entire world!

It is unfathomable to think that a handful of generations ago people like Michael Trenchard and his family walked for days in England seeking work to make ends meet (3). Or to sell their wives. That's a story, The Mayor of Casterbridge, I'd recommend to readers.

Modern life for some offers wonderful opportunities; it's probably too good to be true.

In New Zealand I met an elderly man who survived the Blitz but lost his home and thus emigrated via boat for two months to Australia. Today, there’s probably too much carbon being released into the atmosphere, alas (4).

But with such an opportunity for adventure I do not blame people for making the most of it. If everyone stopped travelling it would not solve our carbon problem; indeed, travel is too important for us to give up (5). Although, we can do things about our climate emergency (and should).

I boarded the Megabus in Manchester on a Friday heading for Leeds on time. I found a window seat and sat down. A friend from Chesterfield - Matt - advised me to ‘look like a weirdo’ so that no one would sit next to me. Despite his lovely advice a woman did in fact sit next to me. Of course at that time I had no idea that this was the wrong bus.

It wasn’t until an hour or so into the journey when I began to collect my things ready to get off that I noticed anything peculiar. An hour is what I had expected to get to Leeds. Now, I’m no geographer but when I noticed the road sign of:

“Birmingham, 25 miles”, I began to think something was wrong.

I checked my phone, which had an online map of the UK, zoomed out and saw Manchester. To the east was Leeds. To the south, Birmingham. A blue dot - us - heading south. Hm?

The woman sitting next to me proved very helpful, although not at first.

I plucked up the courage to speak to her. A sin, talking on public transport! Matt had deeply advised against this. Talking to strangers is another thing I’d say I learned as part of my university education, although in reality that may have come from Dad (and genetics).

After all, we’re talking about a man who has hitch-hiked from Greece to France, across the entire coast of Australia, who drank tea with the Chinese, smoked with the Indians, and who acted as an extra in ‘some film’ in Hong Kong.

Anyway, she told me she was getting off at London. In fact, she went on to say that this bus doesn’t go anywhere but London! I was confused. She laughed a lot.

Acknowledging that it was usually herself who got on the wrong bus… She suggested I speak to the driver.

The Megabus is more coach than bus, it’s long. I walked awkwardly down the corridor while the driver was driving calmly down the motorway.

On a later journey I can remember being terrified sitting at the front of a FlixBus in Germany. Although school teaches us front seats equals teachers and nerds, back seats cool kids, the front is the best, especially when going to a new place. The massive windscreen offers quite the view.

However, this does depend on the personality of the driver. In this case, the driver was honking, effusing German profanity at the bad driving he so evidently perceived:

“Du Hurensohn!”  (son of a bitch!)

Quite timidly I asked the Megabus driver whether this bus went to London.

It does, he said. And does it stop anywhere else on the way? No, he says. Ah. Well, it’s not all bad - you’re entitled to a full refund, he says. A full refund is nothing to turn your nose up at!

One thing led to another and the Megabus went on to refund me my journey, all £4 of it! Looking through a different lens travelling such a way for such a price is not bad at all.

Before arriving at London Victoria, Jacob, the man I was meeting at Lincoln, gave me a call. I was going to be late, I said. For what reason? Details, I said.

My female counterpart on the bus kindly offered me some directions on how to proceed. A train from Euston to Lincoln was possible; unfortunately it did cost more than £4.

It doesn’t seem to take much for total strangers to connect and help each other out. Seemingly regardless of who they are to each other. Watching too much BBC news will teach you otherwise! It does, however, take somebody to break the ice as it were, the cardinal sin at the church of Matt.

Buying train tickets on the day these days is almost unthinkable, especially long distance. A ticket from Manchester to Norfolk can easily cost £70+ on the day and less than £35 in advance, railcard provided.

On the train to Lincoln and much stress later everything was sorted and I was heading in the right direction. By this point my exterior appearance and demeanour was somewhat scruffy. What Matt would call weird. Nobody sat next to me. Despite the mishap it had been very exciting to be in the capital!

On the train I decided I’d like a beer, as I was now feeling relaxed and it was coming into late afternoon. After all, I was eighteen.

A mere Carlsberg can for £5?! I’m sorry I said to the man, I won’t be getting that and sat back down.

How can a beer cost more than a bus cross country? Upon recalculation I decided that in fact I’d pay it - that it was more than worth it - and went back to the same man at the same counter. Value, say those in the Austrian school of economics, is subjective (6).

He greeted me kindly and informed me something to the effect of:

“We are obliged to offer one customer a journey a freebee. Here, these are for you.”

He went around a corner and reappeared with three cans of lager.

“On the house, enjoy!”

Stella 4 baby!

To this day I can't be certain if this actually happened or it was just a mirage. Sometimes the idea of “fate” seems very reasonable indeed. Things do go your way and don’t, quite randomly and with luck.

It is commonly said that luck favours the brave - you have to be out there travelling about, getting on the wrong bus, the right train, to get those free beers (7). Or as the commentator on an old FIFA game said:

"you have to buy a ticket to win the raffle"

A long train journey was ahead. I drank a beer.

Sometime later I got talking to a Geordie man who was covered in paint. He was travelling back to Newcastle from London, something he does frequently.

It was a Friday after all. Naturally, I shared a beer with him.

Upon arriving in Lincoln I was feeling good and met with my friend, success - kind of!

Afterwards I wondered about what had happened in Manchester. Especially about the man who did ‘inspect’ my ticket and let me on.

After many more journeys on the Megabus I soon found out that the destination is clearly written on the front “Leeds”, “London”, “eh-whatever”. To say nothing of the announcements (the announcements clearly say where the buses are going, it's quite easy to listen to them and follow the instructions!). Considering that back then I had a pair of working eyes and ears it’s rather interesting how it all played out.

A central idea in psychology is that our brain is an economic machine: it takes shortcuts, uses mental algorithms, and simplifies the world (8). Imagine each time you viewed the world it was like viewing it a anew! It would be exhausting!

A side note is that children really are seeing the world fresh; everything really is interesting to them! Psychedelic drugs help to recapture this childish view of the world; mental algorithms are broken down and things, for a time, really do become fascinating again (9)! A new dimension, man.

People often "read" things without understanding them. Their brain provides a top-down interpretation of the words on the screen, rather than what the words on the screen actually say, bottom-up.

I'd "seen" Leeds" on the Megabus when in fact it had read London. Alas, damn brain, damn beautiful brain.

It turns out that Lincoln is a beautiful place with a very steep hill.

I don’t think I have ever gotten on to the wrong transport since this first Megabus experience. Nor have I got a freebee at such excellent and thankful timing as that. All of this provided great entertainment for my flatmates when I got back.

But this time I was the first to crack the joke of the country-bumpkin who doesn’t know how to use a bus...

Ah university, I was learning!

Notes

*Capitalism is unfair you say, but poverty is the natural/normal state of affairs for human beings; it used to be far more prevalent around the world than it is today and is declining because of our capitalist system (1, 2). And if you're lucky enough to live in a place at this random point in time and space in human history, then use your money to make the world a better place somehow, in someway! After reading The life you can save (2019, 3) and listening to this Ted Talk I'm thinking about donating a consistent amount of money to a charity which has a proven and measurable track record and methodology that does do LOTS of good for those in extreme poverty, with not that much money. Women need help with "fistulas", which occur during childbirth and then cause damage to their vaginas for their entire lives causing all sorts of suffering. We can treat this fairly easily, we just need money to the right places. We can also help with blindness on the cheap, treat malaria, and give micronutrients to prevent intellectual/developmental disabilities. We can do all of this with small amounts of money from people such as Western individuals. Again, I'm considering setting up a standing order to effective charities which help with some of these things because I believe a small contribution can make a big difference (I don't need to believe it, because we can in fact measure this. Recently more people are demanding that charities actually empirically show what they do, and this is having the positive impact that we actually know where are money goes, how far, what it can do. In short, if you're in the top 10% of earners you have a real opportunity to use your money to reduce suffering in the world, although you won't get the warm fuzzy emotional feelings of doing good, because it's a stranger! Alas, evolutionary psychology did not expect we'd be able to know about strangers in faraway lands! But the opportunity is real nevertheless). I haven't done this yet, but now I know about it, its something I will do!

References

1) Steven Pinker, Enlightenmnet Now (2018)

2) The United Nations, 17 goals (set in 2015): https://sdgs.un.org/goals

3) Peter Singer, The life you can save (2019), free download: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/the-book/

4) Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1888/2005)

5) Mark Maslin, How to save our planet (2020)

6) Simon Reeve, Step by step (2021)

7) Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard (2020)

8) Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The black swan (2008)

9) Daniel Kahneman, Thinking fast and slow (2011)

10) Michael Pollan, How to change your mind (2019)