Unexpected consequence of becoming a mother: utilising a bus service when pushing a pram tends to make one a target for outbursts of aggression from elderly women. Specifically those travelling with a shopping trolley.
It's an unsavoury symptom of the fact that buses have very little space for anything other than bottoms, and, in oxford at least, tend to be overcrowded at all times of day. Double deckers are able to carry three pushchairs, or one pushchair and one wheelchair. Several times I've had to wait for the next bus because there are too many prams already. But there is no formal allowance for the little wheeled carts, without which many elderly people would presumably be unable to fetch groceries. It's so unfortunate that the upshot of this seems to be that the little old ladies are cultivating an unhealthy defensiveness and hostility towards the mothers against whom they always lose the competition for space.
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