A Tale of the TUB

On my way home from École Dirigeable, I regularly take bus number 3 of the Transports Urbains du Beauvaisis. The trip, while short, is mildly unpleasant during the afternoon rush, as the mid-morning and mid-afternoon flocks of pensioners and delinquents are supplanted by a herd of hypermarché shoppers (your correspondent included) with baguettes akimbo, several distinct packs of lycéens playing music on their cell phone speakers, and a veritable bloat of sweatpant-wearing teenage mothers wielding strollers the size of Cadillac Escalades.

Monday’s journey followed this general pattern in every way except two. First, I was able to get a seat on the bus. I immediately scanned the walls, wondering which disadvantaged group (the maimed? the senile? the fallen preggers?) I was depriving of a reserved seat, and quickly spotted the relevant pictogram of the aged and infirm (Fig. 1). Now, the second oddity presented itself: alongside this image was another – this one, inexplicably, displaying a bus crowned by an accent circonflexe (Fig. 2). Further examination revealed that this was an omnibus blessed with the kind of semiotic mystery rarely seen in a public conveyance. Above the central holding pen for strollers appeared a similarly official-seeming pixelated heart (Fig. 3). And, accompanying the emergency instructions above the exit doors, a memento mori reminder of the gravity of any situation which might compel passengers to flee the bus into the Arctic conditions outside,ⁱ was the unmistakeable death’s head of one Anakin Skywalker (Fig. 4).

Not since the dungeon masters of the Underground saw fit to remind riders that the panoptic eye of the British state was watching them from helicopters, as well as CCTV cameras has the iconography of municipal transit attained so sublime an achievement.

 

ⁱOn both sides of la Manche Arctic temperatures officially begin at five degrees below zero.