BOOK RELEASE: DOUBLE DECKER
“A ride to remember…” - Amazon Customer Review
On the morning of a strike by London Tube workers, a man finds himself left with no choice but to commute by bus, where he ends up sat next to an irritating fellow passenger he soon becomes determined to silence - by any means necessary…
Before we ever had access to the freedom a car could afford us, or even knew how to drive one, my friends and I would rely heavily on public transport whenever we needed to travel.
We’d pay our money to the driver (which was how it was done in those days) or buy our tickets at the station (if we were using the Tube), and let those bright red buses and steel grey underground trains take us all over London and we’d have adventures we couldn’t have had if we’d just stuck to places we could walk to.
Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Leicester Square or Soho. Or all four. It didn’t really matter where we went, because everything was an opportunity - a chance to taste something new and gorge ourselves on the world and all the things it had to offer.
Public transport was undoubtedly an essential component in our transition to adulthood, and although our total reliance on it waned somewhat as we entered our twenties, in the decades that have followed it has remained a useful option to have at our disposal and it will always be an intrinsic part of our lives in London. It’s been a means to commute and it’s been a means to do more recreational things, but one thing has stayed consistent during all those journeys over the years: it’s always been full of interesting characters and the unlimited potential for stories to start unfolding around you at any moment.
Like this one, that took place sometime in the late 90s.
We were sat on the top deck of a bus, shooting the breeze about everything and nothing when the vehicle suddenly stopped for no apparent reason by the side of the road and the driver turned off the engine. We could hear some sort of commotion taking place downstairs. Raised voices. And through a combination of low alcohol tolerance and fatigue, one of our group started to panic, convinced that the bus was being hijacked.
It wasn’t.
It was just a couple of unruly passengers getting rowdy, who needed to be ejected before we could be on our way again. But as innocuous as that incident turned out to be, it stayed with me, and coupled with a few other recollections from previous and subsequent trips on our capital’s bus network, it ultimately ended up becoming the inspiration for my first book, ‘Double Decker’.
The central concept was that it would revolve around a reluctant commuter facing a particularly challenging morning, and that it would take place more or less in real time.
When we first encounter him, he is essentially trapped in a confined space at the top of a bus, and we are trapped there with him, witnessing him believing his personal space is getting hijacked until he is eventually pushed towards doing something drastic to regain the comfort of solitude. Or is he?
Do the events that transpire after he meets his annoying companion really happen the way he describes them? Or are they just the product of an anxious and paranoid mind?
It’s up to you to decide, of course, if you dare to take a seat and join him for the ride…
‘Double Decker’ is available now on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.