Anyone unfortunate enough to be at the mercy of any of our public transport systems is deserving of sympathy, and one could forgive them for murder and arson let alone being twenty minutes late for an appointment.

But for this very reason, in my view, public transport should never be used as an excuse except in special circumstances. It's a cop-out excuse which has become just too handy, and devalued by abuse. Nine out of ten times, you did have to wait one hour and ten minutes for a No. 22 bus, but nine out of ten times there will be a lingering suspicion that you spent the one hour and ten minutes in bed and not at a bus stop.

The very fact that public transport is so notoriously unreliable should make it invalid as an excuse. You ought to have known - indeed you did know - that the train would be late, and you should have allowed accordingly for the delay. The inconvenience you have caused others is therefore as much your fault as the railway's.

Which brings me to those 'special circumstances'. Any delay longer than, say, two hours, could not be foreseen and is permissible as an excuse provided it is accompanied by the cause ('Derailment at Doncaster/Baggage handlers' dispute at Orly/Ran aground just off Tenerife'). But better still are those delays that can be attributed to human failure within the public transport system. Such as the bus driver who loses his way and takes his passengers ten miles off the scheduled route. And the conductor who stops the bus and orders all the passengers off so that he can strip off to locate a wasp that has flown up his regulation-issue trouser leg.

Back to Art of Excuses Index