• YOUR correspondent (Bus drivers are in a no-win situation with fare-dodgers, March 23) complains that all Transport for London cares about is “buses maintaining headway”.

I wonder if he (or she) is familiar with a delightfully deadpan comic novel of 2009, The Maintenance of Headway, by Magnus Mills, himself a bus-driver as well as novelist.

We learn from this near-documentary allegory that “the timetables are a complete sham”. We are made privy to “The Theory of Early Running” and why arriving early is a graver sin than running late.

And we are informed that “The only true path is the maintenance of headway”. This is defined by one character as “the notion that a fixed interval between buses on a regular service can be attained and adhered to”. To which his chum replies: “But that’s preposterous.”

Come to think of it, is it preposterous to suspect that your unidentified correspondent is Magnus Mills himself?

NEIL HORNICK
Finchley Road, NW11