One dubious benefit of being a music critic is that you acquire a vast knowledge of the last trains to London from anywhere in England. An old violinist once told me about wartime touring with the London Philharmonic. “Wherever we were playing,” he said, “we always seemed to end up standing in the rain at midnight on Didcot railway station.” Well, nothing changes. Whenever I review in the Midlands I always seem to end up in the middle of the night at a place called Tamworth — from where, it is alleged by that delphic fount of wisdom known as National Rail Enquiries, one can catch the last Euston-bound train from the North. What the delphic voice doesn’t say is that, to make the connection from the Birmingham train, you must hurl yourself over a bridge like an Olympic sprinter and down a set of stairs like a runaway sledge. This doesn’t get any easier with age. Sometimes we are past Milton Keynes before I stop gulping for oxygen.

But at least the late trains are relatively calm places. It’s when they deposit you in London after the Tubes have stopped that the fun starts. Unless you fork out for a taxi, you then encounter a form of transport that offers a unique insight into modern life at its most unexpurgated. Yes, the night bus.

You can’t say that London’s night buses aren’t popular. At 2am they are packed. And since most passengers are stoned or sozzled, there’s no lack of entertainment. Traditionally, someone will shout “I’m gonna puke” shortly before Chalk Farm, and lurch towards the door — which is, of course, closed. (Oh for the return of Routemasters, when drunks could happily fall off buses at will.) Two teenage girls will then discover, traumatically, that they are not on the right bus for Lewisham. After which it is customary for a really ugly drunk bloke who has clearly been trying to pull birds all night to make one last-ditch effort with a woman who happens to be sitting next to him. The conversation will proceed along the lines of one I heard last week:

“So why don’t you come home with me?” “For one thing, I’m a lesbian.” “You mean, like, bisexual?” “No, I mean lesbian.” “So you’ve never shagged a bloke.” “Obviously.” “Don’t know what you’re missing, then.” “In your case, I can imagine.”

The heroes of these buses are the drivers. Their phlegmaticism is wondrous. To drive 60 volatile drunks through the night must feel like walking through a gunpowder store with a lit match. You know there will be an explosion. The only question is when. I’ve seen all sorts of violence on night buses. Most is what Ofsted inspectors would call “low-grade”. I doubt if 1 per cent is reported. You accept that being in close proximity to punch-ups is the penalty you pay for daring to be out late in a big city.

What’s alarming, though, is how quickly a trivial incident turns nasty. Case in point: 2am last Thursday. A young guy, horribly drunk, realises he has missed his stop. He presses the buzzer. Since the stop is long past, the driver keeps going. The passenger lurches forward and starts haranguing him in Anglo-Saxon words of one syllable. The driver calmly pulls up, opens the exit door, and tells the lad he’s free to get off.

This isn’t enough. The lad demands to leave by the front door. His mood gets fouler. Finally he staggers out, picks up a brick, and smashes it against a window, spraying shattered glass across the bus. Then he runs off.

What happens next? I daresay the driver would be within his rights to refuse to go on without stress-counselling, or at least a new window. But he doesn’t. He shrugs, makes a wry comment, and carries on. A true public servant. There aren’t many left.

When I recount such incidents to friends, they roll their eyes and ask me why, at my venerable age, I still use night buses. And it’s true that I am usually the oldest passenger by 25 years. But my feeling is that the night bus is an inexpensive and useful mode of public transport, and that there’s something badly wrong with society if middle-aged people are frightened of using it.

I would go further. To me, the night bus is a metaphor for so many useful public domains in Britain, from comprehensives and hospitals to swimming pools and parks, that are falling into terminal squalor because the middle classes have shrunk from them in horror, and decided to fund far more expensive private alternatives for their own exclusive use. The result is that Britain is increasingly two nations. I don’t like that. Which is why, as a token gesture you may consider ludicrous, I still use night buses.

Besides, there’s a good chance that, among the dishelleved revellers returning from the grungy dives of Camden Town, I will bump into my own children. And as sociologists are always telling us, no father should spurn the opportunity to spend quality time with his offspring. Even if it involves lurching through the mean streets of North London as dawn breaks over Kentish Town.

Fusty fogeys forever

Oh dear. Some over-bright spark at the Women’s Institute — almost certainly a woman — is mounting a “cutting-edge” exhibition to show that the WI is about “a lot more than jam-making and flower arrangements”. Why do they do it? Why do British institutions that were once gloriously staid, and proud of it, feel they now have to be hip and “relevant”? It’s happened to the Tories, M&S, the Church of England, building societies, Cornwall, loads of pubs I used to frequent, Radio 3, the Royal Family . . . the list is endless.

I’m thinking of starting a campaign called FFFF — Fogeys Fighting For Fustiness — for people who think this mad scramble to be trendier-than-thou has gone too ffff-ing far. Luckily, I don’t think the WI is beyond redemption. I see that its radical, cutting-edge show is being mounted at that seething hotbed of revolutionary fervour: the Museum of English Rural Life.

Piece of the action

Meanwhile, the home life of the British male never ceases to amaze. Apparently, 46 per cent of us do jigsaw puzzles. It’s a startling statistic, only slightly flawed by coming from a company, Ravensburger, with a football puzzle to flog. A further 30 per cent of men are said to “add pieces secretly to a puzzle that their wife is doing”. That seems more believable. My wife doesn’t do jigsaws, but she does do Su Doku. And yes, there is a strange, illicit pleasure to be had from filling in numbers behind her back. She’s furious, of course. But that’s because the numbers usually turn out to be wrong.

Times Recommends

• We have kit and leadership. Let’s go
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal
• Conferences — what a waste of money