The year is 2020 and if you’re reading this, at least the proletariat haven’t stolen the post box yet.

Back in the good old days, 2019, the London Transit Commission put a bus stop in Old North. Myself and some like-minded old-stock North Londoners took to City Hall to voice our concerns about what this would do to the neighbourhood.

Nobody believed us or took us seriously at the time.

Those people are likely dead now.

I feel I should tell you, my manse is located at ground zero – there is a bus stop on the boulevard one hundred feet from the brass knob on the door of my century home.

It is a stop for the #1 bus, which runs through more troubled neighbourhoods like SoHo and Kipps Lane. We knew it would be a disaster – mixing castes never ends well. But, the city ignored our pleas and routed the bus through our pristine community anyway.

No sooner was the cement pad poured than I received a call from my financial advisor letting me know that my property value had plummeted by several hundred thousand dollars. I should have sold right then and there, but I didn’t and now my home is worth a paltry $1.5 million.

My neighbours suffered a similar fate. The bus stop became like a black hole, sucking all of the charm from the surrounding area and leaving only emptiness. I can’t bear to see it any longer, so I commissioned an artist to create a fresco of the street the way it used to be on my dressing room wall.

Chaos and destruction

I have my butler look out the window every morning and describe to me what’s going on. He is off for the day, so my butler’s butler is doing the looking for me. The scene he describes is absolutely apocalyptic.

Instead of lush, green, well-manicured lawns he describes only a vast expanse of scorched earth and broken glass. Dirty, poverty-stricken children swing from the street signs like monkeys. Their parents smoke constantly.

Everything smells like canned ravioli.

I haven’t left the house in months. The help fetches my groceries for me.

I remember the first day my housekeeper went out for silver polish after the bus stop was installed. What a terrible experience that was.

Poor Mrs. Merryweather had to lock all the doors as waves of the impoverished clambered over the Mercedes Benz, pulling off the mirrors and wipers like baboons on some sort of safari tour. They no doubt sold these to buy more marijuana needles.

She returned a broken woman, and it was all I could do to calm her down enough that she could polish the silverware.

Since then, things have gotten positively pedestrian.

A trash fire has been burning for the past three months. Packs of stray dogs growl at my purebred poodle when she goes outside for her morning constitutional. We’ve had to replace her golden collar with gold-plated steel in order to deter the thieving masses. It’s humiliating.

When the bus does come by, it belches out vast clouds of smog that completely envelop the untouchables who cram themselves in the door.

They don’t even notice how the roses droop due to the exhaust. What’s the point of a trellis if it’s filled with browning blooms?

Breeding like rats

Traffic on the street has increased tenfold since the bus stop was installed. The number of decrepit autos seem to breed as quickly as the poor themselves. Rusted old Pontiac 6000s leak motor oil on the pavement. Ancient Chevrolet Cavaliers with no mufflers disturb the birdsong.

The other day my butler swore he saw an old Ford Tempo driving on rims alone… whatever that means.

Still, I suppose I should count myself lucky for surviving as long as I have, though my days, I fear, are numbered.

The help is becoming indignant, and no amount of berating will convince them to fetch my daily caviar until the dead of night when the bus stops running. By the time I awake, it’s already hours old. Do you have any idea how dehumanizing that is? I even had to eat – and I hope I’m pronouncing this correctly – a ‘hot dog’ one day when there was nothing else in the walk-in.

So please, reader, heed my words and learn from the city’s mistake. Buses breed intolerables. They will ruin your neighbourhood and render your property worthless.

Sharpen your oyster forks, and stay on guard.

They are coming.

It’s only a matter of time.