Is it as chalk is to cheese? Hardly. More likely, a set of fresh-faced, well-groomed choirboys, decked out to the nines by their doting mummies for Sunday Service, sitting in for a wild bunch of hirsute cowboys steeped in utter lawlessness raring for a bar-room brawl on a Saturday night.

But, at times, the cowboy comes out in the choirboy. It’s that door to the driver’s compartment. It has a tendency to swing open on the bus negotiating the sweetest of curves in the road.

Understandably, the driver’s (left) hand shoots out to bring the door back in place, leaving him with only one hand on the wheel while taking the curve. You know, reminiscent of when the driver texted or called on his cell phone, or dangled his hand out of the window (as a respite from pushing all those buttons for texting and making and taking all those calls).

So, Arriva, please change that puny lock to the driver’s compartment for something sturdier....unless you want to keep reminding us, oh so long ago, of How the West was Done.

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara