I was part of a miserable incident on a bus. This was one evening just before Christmas and I had somewhere to be. As I got on, the driver was trying and failing to communicate with an old man holding a shopping trolley. “He says he wants to go to Enfield,” said the driver. The poor chap with the trolley looked at me and said nothing. His hands had a tremor about them. “Enfield?” I asked. He just stared at me. If he really had wanted to get to Enfield, far north London, by bus, from where we were in........

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