It was quite a ride

FIRST, A FEW WORDS of caution: You will probably be mildly intoxicated while carrying out the following instructions. Nothing too serious -- a couple of glasses of red at lunch, partly neutralized by an afternoon of dreary meetings, followed by two, perhaps three, pints (imperial standard) of gassy ale in the evening. You will almost certainly have reached the point of indiscriminate hunger. Indeed, you may already be in possession of a meaty snack of dubious provenance.

Bearing all this in mind, let’s begin. Make your way to any busy thoroughfare traversing central London. Stand on the sidewalk and begin searching for a large, red, snub-nosed vehicle. When you locate a vehicle traveling in the direction you are headed, start jogging alongside it. As the traffic slows, step out onto the highway (mind the curb) while extending the fingers of your right hand (don’t drop your briefcase). Launch yourself with as much force as you can muster into midair, aiming your extended right foot at the open platform located at the rear of the vehicle. Simultaneously use your extended fingers to grasp at the thick metal pole that is about to connect violently with your head. Lastly, yank yourself forward.

Congratulations, you have just boarded a Routemaster bus and saved yourself a taxi fare. Unless, that is, you are dead.

Back when I was a young reporter for the Times of London, this was how I commuted between boozy post-deadline gatherings in Soho and my home in Islington. The “Number 19,” as the northbound bus was known, somehow felt more glamorous than public transportation should be. I may have secretly believed Margaret Thatcher’s claim that “a man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure,” but it didn’t apply to the Routemaster.

The ability to jump on and off gave you the feeling of control, as though the vehicle was your personal tram service. And the fare, compared with the cost of a black cab, was a pittance. You didn’t even have to stand in line to hand over your coins to the driver. The Routemaster had its own conductor, who offered full seat-side service, leaving the driver to get on with the job of getting you where you wanted to go, quickly.

Often, if the traffic was gridlocked, I would simply hop off the Routemaster and walk a few blocks, then jump on another as the traffic picked up. Try doing that in a Tube train stuck between stations, or in a modern London “bendy-bus,” with its officious pneumatic doors.

The sad news, of course, is that the Routemaster is no more, apart from a couple of “heritage” models to keep the tourists happy (and on which my boarding instructions can still be practiced). Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has sent them all to the Great Bus Depot in the Sky, to make way for newer, bigger, safer, more politically correct vehicles that are easier to use for those with young children and for wheelchair users.

To the 81% of Londoners who opposed taking the beloved Routemaster out of service, Livingstone had these conciliatory words: “There’s a small group of anoraks [geeks] for whom the Routemaster is the most important thing in their lives -- rather than sex or relationships with other people.... [But] the world has changed.”

The world certainly has changed.

Once upon a time, the British appreciated and exploited their engineering genius. And the Routemaster, which sped up journey times and made public transport fun, was genius. So was the British invention of the modern SUV, the Range Rover, which we ended up selling to the Americans. As for that other great British engineering achievement, the Rolls-Royce, it is now owned by -- I can barely write it -- the Germans. Don’t even get me started on the Concorde. The best way to buy a British engineering product these days is to go to Paul Smith on Melrose Avenue and ask for a T-shirt with a print of a Mini on it (it’s the old Mini, before the Germans bought it).

The most sensible option for the Routemaster was not to retire the vehicle but to improve it. Make it wheelchair and children friendly. Give it air-conditioning. Stretch it. Instead, we just tossed it aside. The irony will come many years from now after the Americans or Germans have bought the Routemaster blueprints, re-created the vehicle and sold it back to us. No doubt we will then gasp in renewed admiration of the Number 19.

And recall, with both pleasure and sadness, how clever we once were.