The Maintenance of Headway - Magnus Mills

"The fact is, it's almost impossible to run a proper bus service in this city. The forces ranged against success are just too numerous."

The Maintenance of Headway was written in 2009, which is not that long ago but times change fast, so Magnus Mills's idea of petty English rules and regulations that over-complicate something that should really be quite simple to might seem old fashioned and nostalgic, but it still speaks to us in the age of spreadsheets and statistics that are divorced from everyday reality of human behaviour. "People aren't important, only bus movements", one of the bus drivers here observes. The idea might be preposterous - as most things seem to Jeff, a new driver on the route - but it does reflect how things are viewed from the lofty, detached heights of officials in power. 

Here it's the Board of Transport who are responsible for the maintenance of headway: the notion that a fixed interval between buses on a regular service can be attained and adhered to regardless of traffic and incidents. Mills characteristically focusses on the minutiae of such behaviour, the grumbles and concerns of the ordinary workers to change and progress, but it's a situation that is wholly accurate of human (particularly English?) behaviour and applicable to much wider social concerns. The value of those observations remain true as time passes. As the employees consider that bus conductors had all been paid off a year ago, the narrator comments that their jobs at least are safe, "There's no such thing as an unemployed bus driver". Automation might not be here yet, but it's not far off, and where will we all be then...

Luckily firing is unheard of, except for the case of Thompson, but no one talks about that…

Despite the constant Sisyphean struggle that the employees and inspectors face every day to make the buses run on time, there are still simple pleasures to be found travelling along "the bejewelled thoroughfare", making time to have a tea break, even finding some sense of order within the day. But of course there are always people and impossible regulations to spoil everything. Running buses would be so much easier if they didn't have to pick up and drop off passengers. In fact, the narrator, as in most of Magnus Mills's books, makes no mention of family or outside life. His occupation or hobby tends to be his whole life. He is totally preoccupied with the business of bus driving, talking shop with his colleagues, complaining and philosophising about the nature of their work and its regulations, trying to figure out how best to avoid being giving a talking to for being too early or too late. Late can be tolerated, but there is no excuse for willful earliness…

Like most Magnus Mills, I (re-)read The Maintenance of Highway with a big grin on my face. It's monumentally silly, and yet it shows us how monumentally silly we can be (English/British males in the main) when it comes to setting and following orders and rules. Whether they are followed, rejected or worked around to suit ourselves, Mills entertains but also makes you think about how such traits and behaviours have developed and where they can lead to. How they can be made with good intentions to make everything/society run smoother, but inevitably imperfections become magnified and corruption sets in. When real humans become involved all such good intentions and carefully laid plans tend to go agley.


Reading notes: As noted above, The Maintenance of Headway by Magnus Mills was originally published in 2009. I have a hardcover first edition of the book, this was a (very worthwhile) re-read!

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