Everything that will happen to you on the Magic Bus

The magic bus is a universal part of being a student in Manchester, it sometimes feels like we spend more of our degrees stuck on the Curry Mile than in that lecture or seminar we’re late for. However, throw enough people, alcohol and messy nights out into the mix and there’s never a dull moment. Everything on this list has or will happen to you if you take enough rides on the Magic Bus.

Someone will be sick

It doesn’t matter if it’s the first night of Freshers’ or a ‘quiet one’ in third year, your mate who’s always taking it too far has again got themselves into a state. This results in you leaving a club around three hours before everyone else, staggering to the nearest bus stop and spending approximately half the journey home with their head on your shoulder. Suddenly it all gets too much, the world spins and they end up covering the top floor in five hour old chips.

You sneak off hoping the other passengers or the driver won’t notice.

You will get shouted at by the driver

You didn’t properly flash your bus pass? Standing on the stairs? Not squashed enough to cram another 10 people on? Prepare to get shouted at by a burly Mancunian who is indefinitely pissed off that they’ve spent all day on Oxford Road.

At least they can’t hurt you from behind the glass screen.

The locals will be mean to you

Unlike these locals who most definitely are much scarier and free to sit next to you. We all know there’s a student-town divide but only here does it become crystal clear when their disdain for quinoa-eating, rollie-smoking, home county students comes out and you are invariably branded a “Tory voting gimp” as you and Tobes stumble drunkenly off.

Someone will drunkenly sing ‘Wonderwall’

Really, this was inevitable. 90s night at Fifth Ave was banging and now you and the girls are headed back for a greasy takeaway, but first you must fulfil the right of passage completed by all Manchester students – belt out (almost) all the words to Oasis’s 1995 classic, ‘Wonderwall’.

Your squad will take over the entire top floor

Finally you’ve managed to get your flatmates and your course mates together, the meeting of two worlds, and they’ve brought their flatmates’ course mates’ bezzie-from-home along for good measure. Now as you hone in on some very mediocre club you realise you have completed university as you now have enough friends to fill a Magic Bus.

You will have a bus crush

Both of you get on at the same stop, at the same time every Thursday and you wonder what course she does, what Spotify playlist she is on and if she’s noticed you. Best not say hi though, wait till exams and then you can be library boyfriend and girlfriend.

There will be a literal bus crush

It’s five o’clock and raining so no one walks the curry mile, bikes are left chained up overnight and the huddled masses are left expectantly waiting in the rain for the sight of  beautiful 142. It finally arrives but when it gets there the entire of MMU seems to have had a similar idea. You squeeze in, faces pressed hard against the glass as the sweaty over capacity bus trundles along.

It will get diverted and you will have no idea where you are

It was fine when there were those roadworks and you went through Upper Booth Street, but some rogue Magic Bus driver thinks it’s okay to take you for a shortcut through Moss Side on the way home. As a first year you pray you got on the right bus and stay glued to Google Maps. The second years are chill and know the score- but still couldn’t tell you if this was Rusholme or Mars.

Despite its many faults the magic bus is still probably your favourite way to see Manchester because after all who has the energy to cycle?