'It Could Only Happen up North' pt. II

Today's story is from Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette. I don't know why this happens so frequently - all over the world, and particularly in James Bond films - but I do know that it's absolute manna for the editors of local newspapers because it gives them a) a story in which there was a big accident but no-one died, b) a great photo op, and c) the chance to run editorials about shortcomings in the local infrastructure/ laxity in the bus driver training centre.

Anyway, I thought this bit was great:

“People were shouting, a girl was coming down the stairs looking awful. I didn’t think anybody would get off that top deck alive.
“My neck was hurting a bit but the paramedics gave me some ibuprofen.”

That rhetorical swing from major to minor keys, from death and derring-do on the A19 Stockton by-pass to a minor scrape at a coffee morning: that is incredibly northern. I'm still wondering if the Gazette's interviewee was Mrs Brady of Viz fame...

* Being a generous sort, I've neglected to point out that the bus was a rail-replacement service (DUC makes mano cornuta signs) which was only operating because signalling cables had been stolen in the Hartlepool area. Except I've mentioned it now. What would you want with signalling cables? Either someone has got a to-scale railway in their back garden (not overly likely in Seaton Carew), or some eco-anarchists are redressing the scars of the Beeching disaster by building a network of secret lines across the UK (or Fantastic Mr Fox has realised the benefits of an integrated transport system).