I MAY not be as green as I’m cabbage looking. Though there is much to be said for it, public transport is a myopic necessity, not a far-sighted choice.

Green may not be the colour, anyway. I remain the only sportswriter who buys the Pink to find out what the score was, or who’s never seen a cricket ball because a cricket ball’s red and a cricket pitch is green.

I remember once explaining the problem to Jean, the friendly optician. “Oh,” she said, “so you’re colour blind as well.”

It was the “as well” bit which worried me.

Buses have been a constant companion since the rough ride to school – twopence ha’penny – the garrulous Eden between West Auckland and Spennymoor, the Primrose which on high days ran, what larks, between here and boarding house Blackpool.

Stopping trains were less frequent, though daily we spotted their passing. There’d be the club trips to Redcar, the football matches in Newcastle, the occasional overnight train to London because the night train was ever so much cheaper.

They called it the Highwayman, memory suggests. What on earth would they call it today?

Barely a day passes without my using some form of public transport. It’s a bit like the little girl who had a little curl – when it’s good it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad it’s horrid. These days, sadly, nothing’s more horrid than the East Coast Main Line.

Since being taken over by National Express, the line appears to have become greedier and seedier. Like rabbits in a cornfield, we have retreated into first class – when not on company business – and seen that become grubby and thirdrate, too. The coffee’s dreadful.

On the branch lines, particularly between Bishop Auckland and Saltburn, the trains are antiquated and awful, though one or two appear recently to have had a refurbishment.

No longer do they resemble dirty, clapped out, patched up relics of another age. Now they’re clean, clapped out, patched up… you get the picture, anyway. They use one of those on the 10pm from Newcastle through Darlington to Middlesbrough, a service much frequented by football fans. “Ah yes,” one said the other night, “the train with square wheels.”

Whatever else you do and don’t do on those sagging branches, never, ever go to the loo.

Punctuality’s usually not bad, the all-time lowbeing a five-hour wait for the last southbound train from Morpeth.

Whatever its glories may be by day, Morpeth in the middle of a November night is not greatly to be recommended.

The Tyne and Wear Metro conked out the other night, too, necessitating yet another call to the fourth emergency service – that is to say, the ever-patient lady of this house.

Were it a case of “for better or worse”, marrying someone forever confined to public transport would very much be the latter.

THE two biggest problems, though, are everincreasing fares and overcrowding. Without booking – and now they’re charging up to a fiver for the privilege – it’s almost impossible to get a peak period seat on the East Coast Main Line, or on many cross-country services, either.

The vestibules are cheek-byjowl hideous. They long since outlawed such conditions at football grounds and, come to think, on battery farms, too.

Through it all, railway staff generally are remarkably chirpy, commendably civil.

The people at Darlington travel centre are patience personified, often way beyond the call of duty. If it’s the product of a “difficult customer”

course, it may be the only course on which anyone ever learnt a thing.

They’ll just have to put up with me, anyway. I’ll never get the hang of all those new-fangled machines.

Buses are different. Though clearly there are admirable exceptions, the average bus driver – a journeyman in every sense of the word – greets passengers with the attitude that they aren’t so much boarding his vehicle as attempting to hijack the thing.

The words “please” and “thank you” are alien to his vocabulary. A smile is a sign of weakness or supposition of senility.

Proferring anything more than a £5 note is to risk at best the familiar response than he has no change and at worst a Section 47 assault on the unfortunate ticket machine.

Worse, altogether worse, are the obnoxious sods who deliberately leave early, especially with the last bus, or who sail past the stop minutes before their time. Maybe their horse was lost, or the supper’s getting cold, or the girl- friend’s just rung with bad news.

In a way you can’t blame them, of course. Some of the passengers aren’t exactly the sort of people you’d want to bring home to your mum and dad, either. Worse, they want to sit beside you. Worse yet, they want to talk. Worst of all, they stink.

Some of the buses are pretty anti-social, too. Some of the drivers reckon the Bishop Auckland depot gets more than its share, including double deckers with little upstairs.

The vehicle’s appeal isn’t helped by the amount of quickly discarded free newspapers swilling about. Which environmental earthworm thought of that one?

THOUGH eligible, I’ve not yet claimed a bus pass. If that’s laziness, and it is, it’s not half as feckless as all those latter-day public transport users who, though perfectly ambulant, insist upon catching a bus between one or two stops.

The over-60s bus pass will have much for which to answer when the nation has a collective coronary.

Not much of an encomium to public transport, is it, yet there is much to recommend.

The East Coast Main Line’s wonderfully quick, the rural bus routes can be delightful – that may not include the No 21 from Darlington to Sunderland – and on a fine summer morning there’s still the 5.35 from Darlington to Hawes.

Best of all, trains and buses are places on which to read and write, to eat, to think and to sleep, perchance. Some of my best and happiest columns have been written on the bus.

This one was written in the office.