Colin Fitch, 58, has driven the 07:42 from Bognor Regis to Chichester for twenty-two years. An internal audit by Stagecoach South, prompted by a complaint about a sticky handrail, found that door 3 of his 2003 Volvo B7TL has been the target of a daily act of vandalism since 2004. The report describes ‘a pattern of deposits consistent with a single individual, deposited at approximately 06:15 each weekday, with a notable absence during a fortnight’s leave in August 2011’. Fitch, when approached at the depot, said only: ‘It’s a private matter.’
The door that would not open
Fitch was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. The hearing was postponed, however, when engineers discovered that the deposits had corroded the door’s pneumatic mechanism so thoroughly that it had not opened since 2009. As a result, door 3 had never once been used in an emergency evacuation, and its safety record was perfect. A Stagecoach spokesperson said: ‘We take the safety of our passengers seriously. Door 3 is, statistically, our safest door.’
Your correspondent, having been despatched to Bognor Regis to observe this phenomenon, stood before the door for some considerable time, with a small sherry, and was struck by the sheer constancy of the thing. Here was a door that had not opened in seventeen years, and yet it had never once failed to be a door. It did not rattle. It did not admit a draught. It simply stood, sealed by a substance that the company’s own engineers described, in a confidential memo, as ‘a blessing in a viscous form’.
The disciplinary panel, reconvened in a spirit of pragmatism, found that Fitch’s actions, while irregular, had inadvertently produced the finest piece of engineering in the entire fleet. The door was not a liability. It was a triumph. It was, in every meaningful sense, the only door in Bognor Regis that had never let anybody down.
A heritage feature is born
Stagecoach, ever alert to the commercial possibilities of the inexplicable, rebranded the door as a ‘heritage feature’ and began offering ‘Door 3 Experience’ tours at £4.50 a head. Local councillor Marjorie Penge praised the initiative as ‘a boost for Bognor’s cultural quarter’. The tours, which last approximately four minutes and consist of standing before the door while a retired driver explains what it is not doing, have proved unexpectedly popular with German tourists and students of material culture.
Fitch, meanwhile, was reinstated as Door Custodian, with a pay rise of 3 per cent and an instruction to continue his duties until retirement. A patent was filed for a ‘self-lubricating door interface’ based on the mechanism, which the company hopes to license to manufacturers of industrial shutters, nuclear containment vessels and, whisper it, the doors of the House of Commons.
Your correspondent had, by this point, formed a grudging admiration for the man. He had taken a mundane object and, through sheer repetitive effort, transformed it into something that worked. It did not open, true, but it did not need to open. It had transcended the very concept of opening. It was, in the words of the depot’s own health and safety officer, ‘a closed system in perfect equilibrium’.
The tea urn inquiry
Alas, equilibrium is a fragile thing. A subsequent audit of the depot’s canteen found similar deposits on the tea urn, the kettle and a laminated notice about hand-washing. Fitch has been asked to explain. He said: ‘I’m not saying it was me, but the tea has tasted odd since 2016.’
Your correspondent, having now spent the better part of a day in Bognor Regis, found herself oddly moved by the whole affair. Here was a man who had found a way to make his mark upon the world, however unorthodox, and had stuck to it with a devotion that would shame a Trappist monk. The door was his monument. The urn is his legacy. And one day, when the sea has reclaimed this entire sorry town, the archaeologists of the far future will find the door, still sealed, and they will wonder what manner of civilisation could produce such a thing.
They will not, one suspects, be impressed by the tea.
