The things we hear

Travelling on public transport can be an interesting experience, to say the least. It can give rise to an unhealthy mix of sorrows and pleasures – you can never be too sure that you aren’t going to be chicken-wing tackled between stops by the person you are sitting next to; whether you will have to politely engage in conversation with an alcohol-fuelled, dishevelled-looking would-be philosopher; assist a harassed looking mother to wipe her baby’s vomit from the shoulder of a bewildered businessman; or find a gold coin.

I was recently travelling into the city centre by bus when I overheard a high school student ask a fellow traveller, ‘Excuse me, how do you spell albatross?’

Coleridge was on the curriculum again. It made me wonder how many essays about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner had been written in unusual places. Whilst at university a lecturer once confessed that he marked student essays in the bath, after someone had complained about smudge marks appearing on his handwritten text,

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

In the case of my lecturer, it is probably fair to say that there were way too many ‘drops to drink’. Way too many.
After a few seconds, the man on the bus responded by confidently – and correctly – spelling the requested word. [He too, I conjectured, had obviously studied it at school.] The bus continued winding its way into the city.

God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--
Why look'st thou so?'-'With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.

Shortly before the man alighted from the bus, he turned to the student and, his voice full of doubt, said, ‘I’m not sure that albatross is correct. You’d better check the spelling’. What is it about those birds? The albatross appeared to have been giving the man as much consternation as the Ancient Mariner himself!

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