I really, really tried.

Really. I tried. I failed. Miserably too.

On Sunday I asked The Writer if he felt like trying the new bus system. ‘Have you completely lost it?’ he said. This from the man who until 3 weeks ago told me not to buy another car because ‘maybe the new system would be good enough and we would not need one’.

TW works in the Valletta environs. For the first two years we lived in The Village he got a bus to go to work. He grumbled on the way out and grumbled on the way in. He used to send me messages from the bus which were absolutely hilarious. Eventually I got him an i thingy and he listened to music and read and he complained less. I think he secretly enjoyed it.

We had, previously, tried to live without a car. It was impossible. The day when we turned up two and a half hours late for a dinner date with The Publisher was the day we decided being green and making people red with anger were two different colours. So we bought a car.

Then we sold it and bought a beautiful sports car, which takes only two people. But we only bought one of those. So periodically one of us would go through the rigmarole of getting a disastrous yellow bus.

I was absolutely looking forward to Arriva’s arrival, to ir-riforma fit-trasport pubbliku, to not seeing those bloody nasty drivers any more, ever. To not wanting to tear my hair out as  4 of them and 3 ‘inspectors’ spent hours at the kazin each morning while we waited like twits.

In fact, as a ‘member of the public’ and a potential customer, I did everything right. I have done all that the Austin Gatt Ministry told me to do. I went to the meetings. I participated. I suggested. Thanks to me – because our Mayor is literally thick – The Village has a connecting bus. I think never ever replied to the Ministry’s correspondence and gave his suggestions on our behalf so they left us out. The man can’t ever organise a piss-up in a brewery although he seems to be fine if they happen at 3am and disturb the peace.

So we now have a 4 minute bus which connects us to the Airport. Unless I hadn’t pointed it out, Arriva would never have realised that The Village is not actually in the airport, that old ladies and women with shopping and everybody else could not walk to the airport in the blazing sun and pissing rain and cross through a horrendously dangerous road (the Airport even ‘took’ the pavement in a fit of social responsibility…and nobody stopped them).  Although nobody knows, thanks to me we have a bus.

So on Monday I re-attempted. A trip which used to take one bus now needs a connection. I was fine with that. The Arriva system told me to take an hour’s trip. So the system sucks. I figured out, on my own, a 40 minute one. Their communication is terrible: have machines come up with the system because that is what it seems like. The stop signs make no sense. And why did they leave the old bus stop signs there? We need a general cleanup.

As it was Monday came and went and no bus. Twitter and facebook were full of people getting to work late. We drove to Valletta and could not get a coffee because none of the staff had turned up. On our way back we watched aghast as people waited in the blazing sun then attacked the bus and screamed their way up like crazy persons. We watched all this from the comfort of our posh car. Some buses already seemed to be dirty, as if their own A/C is condensing and streaming water down the roof.

On Tuesday I contemplated the situation again and started to think that the Maltese were a bunch of moaners and groaners. “I will write about this!” I told myself. ‘I will tell everybody that they’re daft. The roads are finally clean. I can breathe. I don’t hear the bus coming in The Village because they’re quiet. There is no horn honking. The drivers are clean and lovely. Some of them are so good looking they’re worth the trip, like a Michelin-starred restaurant.’

So on Wednesday I set a meeting in Valley Road, Msida. ‘I will get a bus’ I told my contact. He laughed, loud and hard. ‘Good luck’ he said.

I realised I had no idea how to get to Valley Road by bus. I did exactly what Arriva said I should do and I did not behave like an illiterate twit as many seemed to be doing. I went on the website and linked our Village to Msida. ‘There are no connections’ the system told me.

‘This is ridiculous’ I thought. So I called them. I listened to disclaimers and 3 minutes of music. Then I got a patient customer service agent. It took her a full fifteen minutes to give me three connections. She suggested a route that takes an hour and a half. I suggested one that takes an hour. Finally after much, much discussion, we figured out a route and the numbers.

The Village bus arrives twice in an hour. 5 minutes before the scheduled time I was on the bus stop. I had books, a packet of nuts and my iPhone, London-style. I listened to music. I read. I watched as a contractor bashed one of our roads and left a pile of dust and ‘equipment’ every five metres. They drove off. Ten minutes after the scheduled arrival there was no bus.

I called Arriva from my mobile. I listed to their music. I listened to their disclaimer. I finally got through to ‘Sue’. ‘How long have you been waiting’ she asked. ‘Fifteen minutes’ I said. ‘Can you check where the bus is?’. I thought they had an electronic tracking system. ‘I will’ she said. ‘Thank you’. ‘Erm…will you tell me?’. ‘No’ she replied. ‘Will you just check?’ ‘Yes’ ‘And?’ ‘And nothing sorry’. ‘You won’t call me to tell me if the bus is actually arriving?’. ‘No, sorry. They are not all working as they should be.’ I wasted another ten minutes of my life and went to our 2^nd car, a bashed up van which my dad gave me ‘to transport the dog’, and drove to the meeting in it, arriving only 30 minutes late.

And then it clicked. No wonder I was thinking that everybody had made a fuss about nothing: like other people, I had not actually tried to get somewhere real using a bus. Like other people, I was still running around in the car, top down, enjoying the fact that uphill I could actually breathe even though I had a bus right in front of me.

So you see, I tried. I really, really tried. But Houston, we really have a problem. And no amount of apologetic press releases is going to solve it. We have given up human methodology to systems. We depend on software to tell us how to get to places and that software just won’t work.

So we’re buying another car. TW is good looking enough that I don’t actually need to ogle at the drivers and these days a/c is standard. Regardless of how bad the old buses were, how awful the old drivers, the new system is most definitely not working. I still need to get to my destination on time. And that’s just not happening.

Today, though, I’ll try again.

Hilarious video. Well, not so hilarious if you're waiting on that bus stop.

Thanks to the brilliant and hilarious bus 'reporter' Fuq tal-Linja. Follow him on twitter