George’s Magical Mystery Tour

One day a bus driver, we’ll call him George, was driving a bus full of people up a steep hill but unfortunately his bus had a broken engine.

George had taken on driver duties near the bottom of the hill when the fault with the engine was already in place – as George liked to point out, it had developed under the previous bus driver.

George had known about the fault from the start but had told his passengers it would go away in time if he just kept on driving. Unfortunately driving on in the same way with a busted engine had made the engine fault worse. Progress was sluggish at first but for the past two years the bus had remained static – the failing engine doing just enough to prevent the bus rolling back down the hill into oblivion but not enough to move it any further forward up the hill.

When George first took on bus driver duties many of the passengers were willing to believe his assurances that driving along with a busted engine was better than fixing it but having spent two years looking out of the windows at the same depressing scenery they had reached the point of mutiny.

And so in March 2013, George addressed his passengers:

To get this bus up the hill, we will start by washing the windows – the weight of that dirt is clearly hampering our progress. Additionally we will paint go-faster stripes on the side of the bus. We will follow this up by cutting the price of the journey for the people in the posh seats at the front, which will by magic, generate more money – money that we will use to fit a big spoiler to the back of the bus to make it look like it’s a fast bus, thereby giving you all confidence that we will get up the hill.

The passengers were not convinced.

But what about the, erm… you know, the problem with the engine?

The problem with the engine was inherited from the previous bus driver.

Ok, but you do seem to have made it worse and anyway, even if it were all the previous bus driver’s fault shouldn’t we, you know.. fix it anyway? You know… in the interest of getting up this hill?

George pretended not to hear and gunned the engine some more. It made a sickly, spluttering sound.

He pretended not to hear that too.

RedEaredRabbit